pairing ⁀➷ bully! cameron cade x plus-size! black reader.
synopsis ⁀➷ cameron has teased you for years on end, but suddenly wants your help with schoolwork. you oblige, but soon find out his hatred for you is not as it seems.
song of chapter ⁀➷ ‘wish you well’ by brent faiyaz (unreleased)
word count + warnings ⁀➷ 3.9k || 18+, nsfw content, no minors! bully!cam, nerd reader, jealous! cam, teasing, nitpicking, mentions of masturbation, one-sided crush, soft fem domme reader, body appreciation, slapping (cameron likes it🤭), jerking off.
‘darling, i don’t wish you well. when you ain’t with me, i want you crying.’
ᥫ᭡
bully! cameron, who seemed to despise your entire existence.
you couldn’t quite figure it out, but each shoulder check, mocking laugh and condescending comment, let you know he for sure hated your guts. you only shared one class with the highly esteemed quarterback, but ran into him on a constant basis in the college hallways.
it was like cameron’s unpaid job was to put you down. pointing out any little mistake you might make—from tripping on your on two feet to dropping your books on the school's floor, cameron is there to let you know how pathetic you really were.
can’t see where you’re going? you’d think with glasses that fucking thick, you’d be able to see miles away.
you ignored him each time, continuing on with homework assignments for your next class without a word. this thing between you two had gone on since your days of high school—you couldn’t understand it. you would’ve thought after years of teasing, he’d grow tired and find someone else to pick with, but cameron’s attention remained lasered on you.
it’s your bully cameron who asks for a request from you. you’re face deep in a cell biology book when he approaches you in the reserved study room. you often found yourself in the library long after school hours, catching up on school work and spending spare time here instead of parties or social functions. you only had one best friend and didn’t do well in large gatherings. school, family, and home were your main priorities.
when cameron sits across from you at the table, you immediately note the expression on his face. he looks serious. more serious than you’ve ever seen him before. he usually held this demeanor during practice or before a big game. while part of you is annoyed, the other half is intrigued. what did he want?
cameron is the one to ask if you could tutor him throughout the week. he’d heard from classmates about the essays and homework you contributed to. you were a fucking genius and able to help almost everyone get their grades up to at least a ‘c’ average. he desperately needed to get his grades together, or he would risk being kicked off the schools football team.
you’re unsure. this was the same guy who made fun of your glasses at any chance, picked on your height and joked about your smarts. he now wanted your help?
“absolutely not.” you’re firm on your stance.
that is until—
“i’ll pay you good. whatever price you want.”
a day turned into weeks and your sessions with cameron continued. the two of you worked on a multitude of subjects. anything cameron needed help with, you were willing to provide. he made sure to pay on time before each session, and you made sure to help him receive the best grades possible. you couldn’t quite put your finger on cameron cade. he was interesting, but he remained quiet—a complete difference from the way he behaved when his friends were around. he worked, listened to what you asked of him and went back to home as usual.
at least that’s what you believed.
unbeknownst to you, cameron cade didn’t always go directly home after every study session.
it didn’t start like this initially.
cameron truly found you annoying.
your perfect hair, starched clothing and positive energy pissed him off. why were you so chipper at 9 in the goddamn morning? why did you know the answer to every question the professor asked? why did seeing your face make him so fucking angry?
he couldn’t understand it.
the one thing cameron was able to manage was his actions towards you. berating and calling out everything you did to was easier than sitting with his true feelings.
the feelings that hit cameron late at night when it was only him and his thoughts in the comfort of his bedroom. not a sound or soul around—just the whir of a nearby fan blowing throughout the room and the ache of his dick trapped behind boxer briefs.
those same thoughts made his vision blur as he imagined your frame underneath the stockings and pleated skirts you wore. he’d think of how you’d look on top of him. would you take your time and ride him slow—or be just as desperate as he’d been and ride him as wildly as you could?
it was the same thoughts that made cameron growl into the air as he came hotly—sticky white substance dripping over his chest and hand, before he washed up to imagine it all over again. maybe a different fantasy this time—one of you, and he crammed in the back seat of his car. he wouldn’t mind, cameron would find a way to make space for you.
cameron’s maladaptive daydream is interrupted as there’s a sound right outside his bedroom window. cameron lived at home with his parents as it was easier to attend school and save money at the same time. he remained in his childhood bedroom and often gazed out the window to look down on the neighbors and their current shenanigans, but it’s during this that he notices a familiar face and shape.
it’s you…
it’s you and cameron’s next door neighbor.
his neighbor lived at home with his parents, just like cameron. he also played football for the school’s rival team, so cameron has no clue as to why you’re meeting with him. he’s obviously an enemy, but you’re downstairs being best friends with him.
cameron watches as the young man hugs you goodbye and proceeds to walk to your car. you smile stupidly in his face before starting your car to drive off into the night, leaving cameron as confused as ever.
“what the fuck?”
cameron lets the time pass. he writes the interaction with you and his neighbor off as a tutoring session, believing that you wouldn’t be in any kind of relationship with someone like him. it helped put his mind at ease for just a bit.
that is, until he encounters the two of you once again.
you both were exiting a local restaurant just as cameron was crossing the street. it’s late at night and cameron is supposed to be walking the family dog, but finds himself eavesdropping on the conversation you two hold. back pressed to the brick wall of a nearby building, cameron listens carefully as you bust into genuine laughter at his neighbor’s joke.
“no, but seriously, y/n, you’re fucking amazing and i really appreciate you.”
“oh, it’s nothing,” he hears you giggle and you never giggled while you were with him. the sound of your beautiful laugh makes his chest tighten. he wished he’d been the reason for your joy. “i can’t wait to see you again. have a good night, babe.”
babe?
the pet name enrages cameron. he holds enough irritation to knock down this entire brick wall, race over, snatch you up and knock that loser the fuck out.
but cameron does nothing.
you weren’t his. he had no rights to you, no rights to behave this way towards you.
days later, cameron’s phone vibrates in his pants pocket.
it’s a text message from you.
hey, i’m sorry to cancel on you, but i won’t be able to make it today. maybe we can meetup sometime next week?
cameron’s eyes lowered as he read over the message once again. he took a deep inhale and clicked on the power button to his phone.
you and he met in the city’s library for tutoring lessons every wednesday and friday without fail. for weeks, cameron spritzed cologne over his neck and wrists, applied oil to his short hair and made sure to keep a tube of mint scented chapstick in his bookbag for…educational purposes. he absolutely looked forward to sessions with you. whether they be one-sided with only your voice speaking throughout the library or silent altogether—wednesday’s and friday’s were his favorite days of the week.
yet, you cancelled.
cameron couldn’t understand it.
are you sure? we can probably meet sometime later tonight, i really don’t to fail this upcoming exam.
cameron paces his room as he awaits a response from you, hoping his excuse doesn’t sound too desperate.
you won’t fail. we can meet up next week.
you wouldn’t budge, and cameron can’t come up with another reason.
“fuck,” he huffs, tossing his phone onto the bed. cameron takes only a second to collect his thoughts before racing to change out of his current outfit and into looser attire.
he needed to blow off some steam.
a two-hour workout session helped to clear cameron’s mind just a little, but not nearly enough. a few bench presses, a jog on the treadmill and a boxing session with a punching bag—yet he kept thinking of you and the message you’d sent earlier. part of him wanted to let you know how he felt—to tell you the resentment he held towards you was misplaced and that he didn’t know how to regulate emotions regarding you. the other half wished you could read his mind and know exactly what he wanted.
cameron passes the school’s library as he leaves the gym. had it been any other day, cameron would’ve went home as usual, but the cancellation of today’s session was getting to him. he couldn’t fucking think straight. he stopped inside and decided to take a seat at the table you and he usually sat in. cameron sorted through his bookbag and fetched textbooks for tomorrows exam, eyes darting over the words as he tried to comprehend the reading material.
you would’ve helped him to understand it.
your calm voice reading over the text before asking what did he think about it. you would’ve cracked open a notebook and wrote down important information with your black ball point pen. you would’ve taken your time and used real-world situations to compare with the homework, helping him learn everything he can before a big test.
you’re all cameron can think about.
so much so that he swears he can hear you.
it’s the same laugh he’d heard for the first time the other day, and cameron is positive he’s completely lost his mind until he sees you and his neighbor emerge from a study room. cameron hides behind the large textbook to avoid his cover being blown. he listens closely and peers from behind the spine of the book as you hug and peck the cheek of his neighbor.
cameron can only sit for so long—waiting until his neighbor has left the library to follow behind as you slip into the basement area of the building.
you don’t hear or see him—cameron makes sure to keep quiet as he tiptoes behind you, searching for words to perfectly convey his thoughts.
“what the fuck are you doing, y/n?”
there’s aggravation in his tone, and the sound of his tenor causes you to flinch—not jump, but simply raise your shoulders in surprise. you turn on the toes of your leather loafers, eyes widened in surprise at cameron cade’s presence.
“are you following me?”
cameron ignores your question. “answer me, y/n.”
“i’m minding my business, cameron, that’s what i’m doing. now answer my question, are you following me?”
cameron pushes past you to walk further into the dusty basement, brushing towards a nearby book case before he speaks. “why are you dragging this nigga all over town? smiling in his fucking face, hugging him and shit.”
“because i can, cameron. why does any of this matter to you? why are you watching my every fucking move.”
“you and that stupid motherfucker are flaunting around town, i can’t help but to see it.”
he expects you to make a run for it—for you to angrily march up the stairs and never talk to him again, but you instead hold a conversation with pinched brows on your gorgeous face. he can’t help the way his stomach whirls when he’s able to see you fully. the basement of this dusty library is dimly lit, just a flicking light bulb that sways back and forth in the corner of the room, but it helps cameron to see you.
you looked beautiful as usual, but a bit more laid back tonight. boho braids flowing around your shoulders—free from the tight bun you often wore, a small hue of blush upon your round cheeks and no glasses on your pretty face.
you weren’t wearing your glasses.
he only takes a second. brief and steady as he glances over you. “where are your glasses?”
“huh?” you squint and it’s not because you weren’t wearing said glasses. usual black frames are not on your face because you were looking for a change in appearance, at least for tonight.
“you heard me. where are your glasses, y/n?”
you’re surprised cameron picked up on it, but cameron forgot absolutely nothing when it came to you. he’s like a wolf hunting prey. he can’t miss the curls strewn through your hair, the neat pressing of your outfit or the heady scent of the perfume you’re wearing.
“and you’re wearing fucking perfume…you-you put that on for him, didn’t you?”
“who?”
“who? you tell me, y/n, who is the nigga to you?”
you’d never seen him like this. so hostile and on edge over you, but it’s at this moment that reality sets and you remember who you’re dealing with. you don’t owe him anything. not an explanation or even an excuse. you push forward and wiggle out of cameron’s intimidating stance.
“it doesn’t matter. it doesn’t matter what i do, or who i do it with, cameron. you aren’t my boyfriend, so it’s none of your business, and i think it’s best that you leave.”
you walk towards the entrance and hold the heavy door open, waiting for cameron cade to exit onto the other side of it, but he just stands in place. icy eyes peer back at you and they’re unforgiving. the only thing that diverts cameron’s attention is the sound of a notification of your phone as it pings from your book bag.
shit.
it’s a short race between you and cameron as you both rush over to grab the device. you should’ve knew better. a 6-foot behemoth was easily going to overpower you. the most athletic thing you conquered was a brisk walk up a flight of stairs to enter your favorite coffee shop.
“give me my phone, cameron!” he holds a hand outward to block the catty hits you give in attempt to get your phone back.
cameron forgets his place.
the idea of someone else having access to you made him go crazy. cameron could almost handle the thought of him not being with you, but someone else getting the pleasure of being near you was enough to drive him through a wall.
“i don’t recall this being any of your fucking business, cameron. why does it matter what i’m doing?!”
“because you’re fucking hugging and kissing him after canceling a tutoring lesson with me.”
“i was helping him study cameron—there! does that make you feel any fucking better?”
“fuck no! you’re getting fucking dressed up for him, but bailing out on me, i’m fucking pissed.” you can sense the genuine anger surging through cameron as he speaks. his usually light irises darken as they pierce into you.
“i’m sorry, cameron.”
but it’s not enough.
“nah, i need to talk to that motherfucka, i need to know something.”
“you’re going to talk to him for what, cameron? i’m confused as to how this is any of your concern. you hate me, so why are you so worried?”
you and cameron begin to tussle. he’s attempting to push past you, searching all throughout your book bag for the vibrating cell phone. you’re holding him by the arm to stay in place, but cameron’s strong—tall, big—any of the words you could think of, so you have little to no fight at this moment, being easily brushed to the side as he moves about.
it’s a last-minute effort, but the heavy smack you send to his left cheek stops him in his tracks. the inside of your palm rings, while a stinging red mark forms on the side of cameron’s face. you’re about to say something—an apology of sorts when cameron forces you to pause. he releases the tiniest surprised moan—low and trapped in the back of his throat, as you watch his dick twitch behind the confines of his shorts.
cameron is silent. pleading eyes wandering over you as he tries to understand why do you turn him on like this? your book bag and the contents inside fall to the ground once cameron drops it.
“you like that? y-you like me smacking you around?” you’re taken aback by his reaction.
cameron remains quiet, but his dick answers whatever questions you have. you can practically feel the heat radiating from it, as he grows harder, continuing to flinch around underneath his clothes.
“answer me, cameron.”
it’s like chewing glass, and cameron can’t swallow the broken pieces down fast enough to speak. he’d kept these feelings locked away for years. years of longing, aching and needing to be near you vanished into thin air from a harsh slap you’d given him. cameron can’t believe the magic you hold.
“answer me, cam,” you’re on the tips of your leather shoes, lush lips skimming across his neck as you speak. you await an answer, but only draw out another shaky moan from him. “tell me, cameron and i can help you feel better. i gotta hear you say it.”
he gulps sharply, forcing his eyelids closed as he tries to regulate. “f—fuck, fuck, yes, yes.”
you began to soften up some. smugness to your voice when you question him, finding delight in the sorrowful position you have him in.
“can i see it, cameron?”
“w-what?” he stutters. “you—you want to see me?”
cameron’s been convinced you were disgusted with his entire presence, hearing your words makes his dick stiffen more. cameron can’t think clearly, but he knows he wants this, knows he wants you to want it as well.
“let me see you, baby.”
you’ve switched—and so quickly at that. cameron’s not sure if you’ve always been like this, but starting as a timid nerd and turning into a sweet voiced domme, shakes him to his core. cameron’s willing, though. he’s happy you were into it like he was.
so cameron obeys.
untying the string to his shorts, cameron starts to fumble with the clothing items until they fall to the ends of his ankles. and the expression on your face cannot be contained—a mix of surprise and satisfaction. you expected a handsome boy like him to have a nice dick—well groomed and beautiful in color, but his length? cameron was a fairly decent size. you would rather not give him too much credit, but his umber tinted dick truly took your breath away.
“you’re big, cameron.”
“yeah?” he’s breathless as he responds.
nodding your head as you continue. “yes and you’re so pretty, you look so good, baby.”
cameron could die happily with the way you’re talking to him, his dick bobs in appreciation from the complimentary words you utter.
“show me what you can do.”
and cameron’s on it immediately, willing to do whatever he can to please you. his large hard drags over his hard dick in a fast motion, jerking along the tightened shaft without regard or concern. his eyes flick back and forth—from you and down to his piece in hand, while you watch.
“you’re rough.”
you giggle a bit as you cross over the room, taking a few steps to get closer to him, as cameron continues to jerk his dick raggedly. he’s too excited—too anxious to reach his nut, that he can hardly contain himself.
“what’s the rush? we got all the time in the world.”
cameron’s looking to you for relief, awaiting whatever you can give him to get off completely. you step beside him and attempt to reach his height from the short distance you stand, clothed breasts brushing the outside of his strong arms as you linger.
the pad of your soft thumb traces over the end of his chiseled jaw, slowly finding your way to
his bottom lip as you grin softly. “open your mouth, cam.”
you only have to ask once because cameron trusts you. he doesn’t know why, but a major part of him knows you’d get him there without a hassle. cameron’s tongue wraps around your thumb without hesitation, moaning in satisfaction at the faint smell of perfume along your skin. his eyes fall closed in satisfaction of the contact.
“drool on that dick, baby, i want you to get it wet for me.”
you pull your hand away from his lips and cameron follows the instructions, opening his mouth wide enough that an elongated string of spit hits the base of his dick without pause. it’s fucking sexy when he does it, hand holding onto a nearby bookshelf as you watch intensely. you try not to moan and only enjoy the show, but it’s almost impossible with a star football player falling apart the simple commands you give.
“do you want me to touch it, cam? want me to make you feel good?”
and it’s more than anything he’s ever wanted in his life. cameron’s skull could rattle with how fast his head shakes. you only give him a little, gentle fingertips twisting at the head of his dick while he shivers in response.
“yes—yeah, please, y/n, please.”
then you think. “but, do you deserve it? have you been good, cameron?”
cameron knows the truth—he’d been acting a fucking fool as of late, but he was here now and he was willing to try, willing to try and be good just for you.
“i can—i can be better, y/n. i can be calmer, nicer—fuck, just touch me please.”
“promise me cameron. promise you’ll be good from here on out. promise you’ll listen to me.”
he nods furiously, “yes, yes, i’ll be good, i’ll be good and i’ll do whatever you want.”
with the lubrication of his spit, you’re easily able to tug on cameron’s big dick, opposite hand finding purchase around his wide neck. you choke him softly, just enough that it takes his breath way and makes him moan at the same time.
“lift your shirt up, i wanna see you, baby, i gotta see you.”
with hardly any focus, cameron scrambles to unzip his jacket and raise his plain t-shirt like you commanded him to. your soft hand grazes the rippled skin of his abs in admiration. his skin is damp from a previous workout and the anxiety of being in your hold and you can smell it on him. the scent of his natural sweaty aroma combined with a woodsy cologne makes your pussy clench around nothing.
you wanted him.
you didn’t mind the idea of cameron bending you over this bookcase and fucking you like nobody’s business, but you knew better—knew you couldn’t give it to him that easily. cameron would have to earn it. you jerking him off was an act of kindness after canceling the tutoring session. anything from this point forward would require some serious effort.
it feels like the community has been a little quiet lately, so i wanted to drop a little cheesy cameron cade one shot and see what everybody’s been up to.
also…
are we still messing with tyriq???
because ever since the girlfriend reveal it’s been crickets and i’m trying to see if we’re still standing ten toes down or if everybody moved on 😭
let a girl know.
anyways, i hope y’all enjoy this one. thank you for always showing love and making this space so fun ♡
Not Another Girl
Cameron Cade had a reputation.
You had every intention of avoiding it.
Cameron had other plans.
Dance rehearsal dragged out longer than you wanted it to.
Your body ached the second you stepped outside the building with your dance bag hanging off your shoulder while two of your friends walked beside you equally exhausted.
"I swear coach hates us," one of them groaned.
You laughed tiredly while adjusting the strap slipping down your arm. "She definitely trying to kill us before nationals."
The cool night air hit your skin after hours inside the hot studio. Campus looked calmer this late at night, most students already back in their dorms while lights from nearby buildings glowed against the dark sky.
Then one of your friends suddenly grabbed your arm. "Oh my God."
"What now?" you sighed.
"The football team."
Your other friend perked up. “Where?"
You looked ahead noticing the football players crossing the lot not too far away still dressed from practice, loud and laughing amongst themselves while heading toward the athletic building.
Your friends weren’t wrong, the football team did have some fine men on it.
Especially one in particular.
Cameron Cade walked near the middle of the group wearing gray sweats and a compression shirt that looked disrespectful on his body. His duffel bag hung off one shoulder while he laughed at something one of his teammates said.
Even from a distance people naturally gravitated toward him.
Annoyingly.
"One thing about Cameron," your friend muttered shamelessly. "That man is fine."
You rolled your eyes. “Please.”
"Oh don't do that," she laughed bumping your shoulder. "You know that boy fine."
"I didn't say he was ugly."
"Which means she agrees!" your other friend yelled.
You laughed shaking your head. "He also talk to half the girls on this campus."
"And?" your friend shrugged. "I'm not trying to marry him."
You snorted while glancing back toward the football players again. The campus rumors matched the visuals, Cameron really was attractive and he knew it too.
Every time you saw him around campus he carried himself with this stupid effortless confidence that made people automatically stare.
It was irritating.
A little intriguing too but mostly irritating.
Your friends were still going on about the football team when you realized you were missing something.
"I left my speaker in the dance room."
One of them groaned. "Girl no."
"I'll be quick," you promised turning around toward the building again. "Don't wait up for me."
"Oh we won't!" your friend yelled.
You pointed at her accusingly while laughing. "Fake."
"We love you though!"
Their laughter echoed behind you while you made your way back toward the dance building shaking your head to yourself.
A few minutes later you finally pushed back out the doors with your speaker tucked underneath your arm feeling victorious.
Until you looked up nearly walking straight into someone. A hand shot out catching your arm before the collision fully happened.
“Careful,” a deep voice came softly. “You almost tackled the starting quarterback.”
Your breath caught.
Cameron Cade stood in front of you already looking amused. Up close he looked even more unfair in the face, his buzz cut fresh and sharp while sweat still lightly gleamed against his skin from practice.
You stepped back quickly clearing your throat. "My bad."
Cameron glanced down at the speaker tucked against your hip before looking back at you again.
"You dance team right?" he asked casually.
You blinked once. "And you play football," you answered dryly.
That made him laugh.
"Damn," he laughed softly. "You don't even know me and already got an attitude."
You adjusted the speaker against your hip before looking up at him. "I know enough to have an attitude."
Cameron's eyebrows lifted like that answer entertained him. "Oh so you judging me off rumors?"
"If the shoe fits." you shrugged.
That made him laugh again shaking his head while looking down at you a little more carefully. "Nah," he said. "You funny as hell."
"And you flirt with everybody."
"You jealous already?"
You let out a short laugh. "Oh please."
Cameron smirked leaning against the wall beside you. "So you do pay attention to me."
"Kinda hard not to when half the female population on campus is attached to your hip."
"You really think you got me figured out already?" He asked.
"Everybody got you figured out."
Cameron tilted his head watching you before smiling. "You know what your problem is?"
Your eyes narrowed playfully. "What?"
"You decided what type of person I was before I even got the chance to talk to you."
You held his stare trying not to fold under the way he was looking at you. "And?"
“Now I gotta change your mind.”
A couple football players walked past the building entrance before one of them called out:
"Aye Cam you coming?"
Cameron didn't even look away from you. "In a minute."
Your stomach flipped embarrassingly hard at that.
"Aight then,” he said. "Lemme get your number."
You shake your head. “No sir”
The smile on Cameron's face shifted enough to let you know he wasn't expecting that answer.
"...damn."
You laughed softly finally stepping around him. "Goodnight Cameron."
He turned immediately watching you walk backwards a few steps. "So that's it?"
You shrugged. “You’ll survive.”
Then you turned walking off toward the parking lot before he could say anything else.
-
Your sociology lecture had barely started when the classroom door swung open.
A couple people looked up briefly before returning to their laptops once Cameron walked in wearing all black, with nothing but his phone in his hand.
His eyes landed on you and that stupid smirk appeared across his face.
You looked back down at your notebook pretending not to notice while your friend beside you started grinning.
"He’s coming this way," she whispered.
"Be quiet."
You could hear him getting closer before he finally stopped beside your desk.
"Is this seat taken?" He stood there looking entertained with himself already.
“Yes actually,” you answered smoothly. “It is.”
His smirk only deepened. “Mhm.”
You rolled your eyes fighting a smile before moving your bag off the empty chair beside you.
Cameron sat down comfortably and it annoyed you more than it should’ve.
Your professor continued talking at the front of the room while you tried focusing on the lecture and pretending his entire presence wasn't distracting.
You then feel something nudge your foot underneath the desk. You look over, Cameron sat there staring toward the front of the classroom like he hadn't done anything at all.
You narrow your eyes, he kept a straight face for about three seconds before the corner of his mouth twitched.
Childish.
You looked back toward the board trying to ignore him until your pen suddenly disappeared from your hand. Your head snapped sideways, Cameron casually examined your pen like he didn’t just snatch it out of your hand.
“Can you stop?”
“Stop what?” he asked innocently.
You look at your pen in his hand. “That doesn’t belong to you.”
He looked down at your notebook. "Your handwriting nice."
You snatched the pen back while Cameron laughed quietly beside you.
A few minutes passed peacefully before he leaned over again.
"What you writing?"
"Notes, where are yours? You haven’t wrote a single thing down.” you say looking at him.
Cameron leaned back in his chair unbothered. "I got tutors for that."
"Do you actually," you whispered back, "or you got people doing the work for you?"
Cameron's eyebrows shot up. He placed a dramatic hand over his chest while opening his mouth in fake offense, the shocked expression pulling a quiet laugh from you before you could stop it.
"Still judging off rumors I see," he accused.
You sucked your teeth softly. "I only asked a question."
"It was backhanded."
"You still didn’t answer it though," you pointed out lifting your chin a little. "And that's answer enough."
You turned your attention back toward the board, beside you, Cameron chuckled low under his breath, then suddenly his finger flicked lightly underneath your chin.
Your head snapped toward him again. “Can you not?”
Cameron only held his hands up innocently in surrender before leaning back comfortably into his chair. You rolled your eyes shaking your head, but the smile threatening your lips gave you away.
After that he finally stopped bothering you. At least physically, because his presence alone made focusing almost impossible.
Every time he shifted beside you or laughed quietly at something on his phone your attention drifted right back toward him against your will.
It was ridiculous.
When class ended you barely remembered anything your professor talked about.
The sound of chairs scraping across the floor filled the room while students started packing their things, Cameron stood first.
He looked down at you. “I’ll see you later.” The words sounded confident but you couldn’t shake how it sounded more like a question.
You stood too adjusting your bag onto your shoulder. "I doubt it."
You walked past him before he could say anything, but you could feel his eyes following you the entire way toward the classroom door.
That alone made your stomach flip.
Right before walking out, you glanced back over your shoulder one last time. Then gave him a small wave.
Cameron stared after you smiling to himself while you disappeared into the hallway.
-
Dance rehearsal finally ended close to nine and your entire body was worn out.
The music had been blasting for hours, your coach had been in a mood all night, and all you wanted at this point was a shower and your bed.
You walked out the building with your friends beside you laughing at something one of them said when another suddenly grabbed your arm.
“Oww Girl.”
You recognized that tone. “What?” you sighed.
Nobody answered which made you look up.
Cameron stood leaned against the hood of a black SUV parked near the curb, hands tucked into the pockets of his hoodie while talking to one of his teammates.
His head turned like he felt you looking at him.
Your stomach betrayed you.
The corner of Cameron's mouth lifted when he spotted you standing there.
"Mhm," another one of your friends hummed. "Quarterback waiting outside dance rehearsal for YOU specifically.
You rolled your eyes. "How do you know he's waiting for me?"
All three of your friend stopped walking just to stare at you.
“Please. That man looked at you the second we walked out.”
You tried fighting your smile while walking closer toward the parking lot.
Cameron pushed himself off the car once your group got near. His teammate muttered something to him before laughing and walking away.
Now his full attention rested on you.
It should’ve been illegal at how he was looking at you.
"You stalking me now?" you asked once he stopped in front of you.
Cameron looked down at you. "You say that like you hard to find."
One of your friends snorted loudly behind you.
You shot her a look while Cameron laughed under his breath.
The girls finally continued walking ahead leaving you alone with him underneath the glow of the campus lights.
The silence between you somehow felt comfortable.
Dangerously comfortable.
"What are you doing here?" you asked shifting your weight onto one leg.
Cameron shrugged. "Wanted to see you."
Your brows pulled together because the honesty caught you off guard.
He noticed too because his smirk appeared right after. "You look shocked."
“I am.”
He waved you off. "You just don't trust me yet."
That shut you up because he wasn’t entirely wrong.
Cameron started walking beside you toward the parking lot like there was never a question about whether he was walking you to your car or not.
"You hungry?" he asked after a minute.
You looked over at him suspiciously. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"A simple yes or no would've worked."
You rolled your eyes. "Yes."
"Aight."
"Aight what?"
"We getting food."
You let out a laugh. "Cameron."
"What?"
"You just decided that?"
He looked down at you with a shrug. "You act like I asked you to marry me. It's food."
You tried so hard not to smile but Cameron had this irritating way of making you laugh when you wanted to stay guarded.
"You are very persistent."
“You still ain’t give me your number yet either.”
You stopped walking near your car turning toward him slowly. Cameron looked satisfied with himself like he already knew he was winning you over little by little.
"You’re not tired of asking?"
"Nah."
Your eyes narrowed playfully. "What if I say no again?"
Cameron stepped closer just enough to make your heart beat harder. "Then I ask again tomorrow."
The confidence in his voice should not have affected you as much as it did. You stared at him before sighing dramatically and holding your hand out.
A grin spreads across Cameron’s face. "See," he said pulling his phone from his pocket quickly. "Knew you liked me a little."
You snatched the phone from his hand typing your number in before handing it back to him.
"Don't call me."
Cameron looked down at the contact before glancing back up at you with a smirk. "That don't even sound convincing."
You fought a smile but failed miserably. “Whatever.”
He laughed before sliding his phone back into his pocket. "Aight, let's go."
You paused. "Wait."
Cameron looked at you.
"I can just follow behind you."
He shook his head. “No.”
You raised an eyebrow. "No? Afraid I'll drive home instead?" you teased.
"Shiiddd, you might."
A laugh escaped you.
Cameron took a few steps backward toward his SUV before adding, "I'll have you back on campus at a decent time."
"Okay fine," you relented. "But you're paying."
The smile Cameron gave you made it seem like that had never been up for discussion. "Wouldn't be much of a gentleman if I didn't."
You rolled your eyes. "Who told you that you were a gentleman?"
"Everybody."
You shake your head. “Boy you ain’t shit.”
"You still gave me your number though."
"Keep talking and I'll take it back."
"Too late."
Before you could come up with a comeback, Cameron stepped around the vehicle and opened the passenger door for you.
"Thanks," you murmured stepping in.
He nodded once before closing the door.
A moment later he slid into the driver's seat, buckled his seatbelt, and started the engine.
As he pulled out of the parking lot, you glanced out the window hoping the darkness would hide the smile tugging at your lips.
-
Ten minutes into the drive and Cameron had already made you laugh three times.
He was talking about about random things that happened at practice while you occasionally laughed and shook your head at him.
Twenty minutes later the two of you sat across from each other in a small wing spot just off campus.
A basket of fries sat between you while Cameron worked through an order of wings like he hadn't eaten in days.
You watched him before finally asking. "How many girls have you brought here?"
Cameron looked up, the corner of his mouth twitched. "What kind of question is that?"
You pointed a fry at him. "You can't answer a question with a question."
Cameron laughed shaking his head. "You are nosey."
You shrugged. "I be curious."
"That's dangerous."
"For who?"
Cameron looked at you over the top of his cup. "Me apparently."
You laughed, pleased with yourself.
The conversation died down for a moment before you spoke again.
"So."
Cameron looked up. "So?"
"How long you been playing football?"
His expression softened a little. "Since I was seven."
Your eyebrows lifted. "Seven?"
"Mhm."
"That's like... your entire life."
Cameron shrugged. "Pretty much."
A smirk slowly appeared on your face. "Are you any good?"
Cameron sucked his teeth. "Man watch out."
Your laugh came out before you could stop it. "I'm serious."
"You know exactly who I am."
"That wasn't my question."
Cameron pointed at you from across the table. "See? This why I don't like talking to you."
"Because I keep you humble?"
"Because you’re irritating."
"Mhm."
"Real irritating." The smile on his face ruined any chance of it sounding convincing.
You leaned back in your chair crossing your arms with a knowing look on your face.
"Your turn," he said.
"My turn?"
"How long you been dancing?"
A smile immediately found its way onto your face. "Since I was five."
"Five?"
"See? Now who's saying that's crazy."
Cameron laughed. "Fair."
You picked at a fry. "I always wanted to dance at an HBCU though."
That seemed to catch his attention. "Really?"
You nodded. "Yeah."
"Why?"
The question made you smile wider. "The culture."
Cameron nodded.
"The band."
He nodded again.
"The energy."
"Mmm."
"The halftime performances."
That earned a grin from him. "I knew that was coming."
You laughed. "You football players think everything revolves around y'all."
"It do."
You threw a fry at him. Cameron caught it before it even reached his chest. The smug look on his face made you regret it.
"Oh that's annoying."
"Natural talent."
"Highly unlikely."
He laughed.
Between talking about majors, professors, and childhood dreams, Cameron stopped feeling like this larger-than-life person everyone on campus seemed to know. He just felt like Cameron, funny, easy to talk to, and annoyingly charming.
“So you major in marketing?” He asked.
You nod. “Yes.”
His eyebrows lifted. "That explains a lot."
You narrowed your eyes. "What is that supposed to mean?"
He pointed at you. "You talk too much."
Your mouth fell open. "I do not."
"You absolutely do."
You laughed. "You've literally been talking this entire time."
"Yeah but my voice nice."
You stared at him. The confidence, the audacity, the stupidity. All rolled into one person.
“God help whoever has to deal with you every day.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
“I’m sure you have.”
Cameron just smiled.
A comfortable silence settled between you as you reached for another fry.
You were in the middle of explaining something when the words slowly died in your throat.
Cameron was looking at you like he’d forgotten what you were talking about entirely. The look on his face made your heart rate pick up a bit.
You stopped talking. "What?"
"Hm?"
"Why are you staring at me?"
A smile tugged at his mouth. "I'm listening."
"No you're not."
"I am."
"No."
Cameron laughed quietly.
Then leaned forward. "Hold on."
You blinked. "What?"
His thumb brushed lightly against the corner of your mouth.
Your entire train of thought disappeared.
"There." He leaned back in his seat. “You had sauce right there.”
You sucked your teeth. "You just wanted to touch me."
Cameron smirked. "That's what you got from that?"
Heat crept up your neck. "I'm just saying."
"You had sauce on your face."
"Mhm."
"You did."
"Mhm."
Cameron shook his head laughing. "You’re too much."
His eyes dropped to his phone before he looked back at you “It’s getting late.”
You glanced toward the window and realized he was right. You completely lost track of time. "Wow."
Cameron stood up. "Come on."
You grabbed your bag while he tossed a few bills onto the table.
"Told you I was paying."
"Such a gentleman." you said sarcastically.
Cameron grinned shrugging his shoulders. "What can I say?”
You laughed as the two of you headed toward the door.
Back on campus, Cameron parked right by your car.
"Thanks for dinner."
"Anytime."
You opened the door before pausing. "Goodnight, Cameron."
Something about the way you said his name made him smile.
"Goodnight."
You shook your head laughing quietly before climbing out.
Cameron watched until you were safely in your car.
Then finally drove off.
-
The next few weeks settled into a rhythm. Seeing Cameron became part of your routine.
He’d be waiting outside your classes more often than not, always claiming he was already headed that way anyway.
You never believed him.
Your friend didn’t either.
Every time Cameron appeared, they exchanged knowing looks before looking at you. It was so annoying.
Lunches turned into study sessions. Study sessions turned into walks across campus. Walks across campus turned into spending entire afternoons together without either of you realizing how much time had passed.
Cameron started showing up after dance rehearsals, leaning against his car waiting like he didn’t have anything better to do. Which was ridiculous considering he was Cameron Cade.
The football team wasn’t much better. The first time you stopped by practice, one of Cameron’s teammates spotted you standing near the fence and yelled, “There go your girlfriend.”
Several heads turned.
You almost laughed at how quickly Cameron’s face changed.
“She not my girlfriend.”
His teammate gave him a look. “Yet.” Cameron didn’t have a comeback and you never let him live that down.
The texts became more frequent.
Good luck on your exam.
You eat yet?
Practice was terrible.
Call me.
Look what they serving in the cafeteria.
He always found a reason to text you and you answered every single time. You stopped being surprised when his name lit up your phone. Stopped pretending you didn’t look for him after class. Stopped wondering if he’d show up because he always did.
Cameron had stopped feeling like a distraction and became someone you genuinely looked forward to seeing. Which would’ve been fine if it didn’t scare you a little, but you stopped worrying about what happened next and let yourself be happy.
-
The entire campus seemed to be outside.
Music blasted from speakers in the distance while students crowded every inch of campus. People danced in the streets, laughed in clusters, and shouted greetings every few steps as they passed familiar faces.
The smell of food floated through the air from vendors lined along the sidewalks while a dance circle had formed near the center of the crowd, drawing cheers every time somebody stepped into it.
“This is exactly why I love this school,” your friend said, grabbing your arm as the two of you pushed through the crowd.
You laughed. “You say that every event.”
“Every event proves me right.”
A smile tugged at your lips as you looked around.
The energy was infectious. Students wearing Greek letters strolled past. Someone was carrying a plate piled embarrassingly high with food. A group nearby was arguing over who had the best step team on campus. It felt like the entire university had shown up.
“Come on,” your friend said grabbing your hand instead. “Let’s get something to eat before the line gets ridiculous.”
You let her drag you toward the food trucks shaking your head while she continued talking.
A little while later, you and your friend had managed to claim a spot near one of the food trucks. A plate of jerk chicken, rice, and plantains sat between the two of you. You scoop up some more rice, your eyes drifting across the crowd for what felt like the hundredth time.
“Looking for someone?” your friend asked with a smirk.
Your eyes snapped back to her. “What?”
She laughed. “You heard me.”
You sighed, your shoulders relaxing. “I haven’t seen him today.” The words left your mouth before you could stop them.
Your friend’s expression softened. “Ya’ll really be spending a lot of time together.”
You gave her a look, lowkey already knowing where this conversation was headed.
“Are y’all like… a thing?”
You sucked your teeth. “Can it just be time well spent?”
Your friend held her hands up in surrender. “I was just asking.”
You shook your head smiling and stood up. “I’m gonna go get something to drink.”
“Get me one too.”
“No.”
“You’re rude.”
You laughed as you walked away.
The line wasn’t bad just long enough for you to pull out your phone and scroll while you waited. A group of girls stood a few feet away talking loudly over the music. You weren’t paying attention at first, not until you heard a familiar name.
“Cameron.”
Your thumb paused over your screen.
“You talking about Cameron Cade?” one of the girls asked.
The other girl laughed. “Yep.”
“What about him?”
The girl shrugged. “I was with him last night.”
Your stomach dropped.
“You lying.”
“I’m serious.” The girl laughed again. “I was just with him last night.”
You stared at your phone, reading the same text message over and over without actually processing a single word. Maybe she was lying. Maybe she wasn’t. The problem was you didn’t know, and that bothered you.
Cameron wasn’t yours.
The two of you had never established anything. Never had that conversation. Never put a title on whatever this was. So technically, he hadn’t done anything wrong.
That didn’t stop the sinking feeling settling in your chest.
You tried focusing on your phone again, but it was pointless. The girl kept talking, her friends hanging onto every word while she laughed and continued the story. Before she could get any further into detail, you shoved your phone into your pocket and stepped out of line.
The drink didn’t matter anymore.
You needed a minute.
The music seemed louder as you moved through the crowd, weaving around groups of students and trying to ignore the knot forming in your stomach. You weren’t even sure where you were going. Somewhere quieter, hopefully. Somewhere you could get yourself together before you did something stupid.
“Y/n.”
You looked up to find your friend making her way toward you.
“There you are,” she said before smiling. “Cameron is looking for you.”
Your eyes lift finding him standing a short distance behind her. Any hope of getting a minute to yourself disappeared when you saw him.
His attention was already on you.
You looked away before he could read whatever was written on your face. Your friend glanced between the two of you, her smile slowly fading as she took in your expression.
“You okay?” she asked carefully.
You swallowed and forced yourself to nod. “I need a minute.”
Something in your voice must’ve told her not to push because she simply nodded.
You turn in the opposite direction barely making it a few steps before you heard your name.
“Y/n.”
You kept walking.
You didn’t stop until the music faded into the background and the crowd thinned enough for you to breath. Closing your eyes, you took a deep breath and shook your head, trying to get rid of the feeling sitting heavy in your chest.
“Didn’t know you were into chasing.”
Cameron’s voice made you snap your eyes open and turn around. A grin sat on his face from having finally caught up to you but when he got a good look at you, it disappeared.
His brows pulled together. “What’s wrong.”
You crossed your arms over your chest narrowing your eyes at him. “Were you with someone last night?”
He tilted his head at you. “Wha-“
You held up your hand. “Actually, don’t even answer that.”
Cameron frowned. “No, you asked now we’re talking about it.” “Yes, I was with someone last night, but it wasn’t like that.”
You gave him a knowing look. “Oh? How typical.”
Now it was Cameron’s turn to narrow his eyes. “What did you hear?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
He shook his head. “Nah, we’re not doing this. What did you hear?” His voice dropped lower.
You looked away. “She made it seem like it was like that.”
“And you’re believing her?”
“Can you blame me?” You held your hands out before crossing your arms back over your chest again.
A humorless chuckle left Cameron as he shook his head. “I don’t get it.”
You look up.
“All this time we’ve been spending together and you still don’t trust me.”
“It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
You laughed softly, but there wasn’t any humor in it. “Come on, Cameron.”
“No.” His voice was firm. “No because I want to know.”
You swallowed. “This is exactly way I didn’t want to have this conversation.”
“Why?”
You shook your head. “Because I sound crazy.”
“I need more than that.”
You blinked. “What?”
Cameron held your gaze. “I need more than that y/n.”
You let out a frustrated laugh. “It’s not my place to question you about things like that.”
“Who decided that?”
Your eyebrows raised. “Are you going let me talk or are you going to keep interrupting me?”
“I want you to tell me the truth.” Cameron wasn’t letting up, it felt like he was physically pulling the truth out of you.
You huff. “Fine. What she said bothered me because I like you. Is that what you wanted to hear?” The words were out now with no room for taking them back.
“Yes.” Cameron says without hesitation.
You look away shaking your head. “You don’t get it.”
Cameron made a face. “What is there to get y/n?”
“I wasn’t supposed to catch feelings for you.” you blurt out.
“Why not? Cameron pressed stepping closer to you. Close enough to make you look up at him. The movement stole whatever response you’d been about to give.
You went quiet frowning up at him.
Cameron raised an eyebrow taking one finale step closer to you making you drop your arms and straighten up. “Answer the question.” he demanded.
"Let's not act like that reputation is non-existent."
He sucked his teeth waving you off. "Here you go with that bullshit again, acting like you know me based off of whatever you made up in your head.”
All you could do was roll your eyes.
Cameron shook his head. “When we first met? Cool. I understood it.” His hand motioned between the two of you. “You didn’t know me. You heard some stories, made your little assumptions, whatever.”
You opened your mouth. “My little assumptions?“
“Yes, your little assumptions” Cameron mocked.
Despite everything, the corner of his mouth twitched but it disappeared just as fast.
“We’re way past that now. You’ve spent all this time with me and you know how I move. Now some random girl says something and suddenly we’re back at day one.”
The conviction in his voice made your stomach twist.
“Cameron-“
He shook his head. “No, because I am tired of hearing about that reputation shit.”
You opened your mouth to argue but you he cut you off. “You like me, Y/n, and you heard what that girl said and started trippin.”
The confidence in his voice was infuriating.
“I was not trippin.”
“You absolutely were.”
You rolled your eyes again.
Cameron looked at you like he couldn’t believe you were standing here acting like liking him was a bad thing.
He took a step back. “You need to grow up.”
Your mouth fell open. “I need to grow up?” You gestured toward yourself.
“Yeah.” He nodded once. “Because you’re standing here arguing with me over something somebody else said instead of paying attention to what’s been right in front of you this whole time.”
You hated how much sense he made.
Cameron took another step back before you can respond. “I’ll see you later y/n.” he turned and walked away.
You stared at his retreating back before throwing your hands up. “Ugh!”
You weren’t even sure who you were more irritated with.
Him.
Or yourself.
-
Ten minutes before halftime and you couldn't focus on anything. The dance team was gathered near the tunnel making final adjustments before taking the field. Some girls stretched, others ran through counts, everyone seemed locked in expect you.
You kept making adjustments to your uniform until you let out a frustrated breath.
This was ridiculous.
You'd spent the last two days trying not to think about Cameron and every time you replayed the conversation from the block party you got annoyed.
You need to grow up.
The audacity, you rolled your eyes just thinking about it because who did he think he was?
The nerve of him to stand there and tell you to grow up after following you across campus and forcing you into a conversation you hadn't even wanted to have in the first place.
And yet...
The more you thought about it, the less upset you felt because if Cameron truly didn't care, none of that would've happened. He could've let you walk away, shrugged it off, he even could have told you it wasn't his problem and gone back to the party.
Instead he'd followed you, listened and argued with you. You hated where that realization was leading. Not because it was uncomfortable but because it made sense.
Your eyes drifted toward the sideline where the players were. Cameron was out there somewhere probably unbothered. The thought almost made you laugh expect, you didn't actually believe that anymore.
Not after the look on his face when you'd questioned him and the way he'd kept asking you the same question.
Why not?
You swallowed.
That question kept replaying in your head. It was the way he'd looked so confused by the idea that you weren't supposed to like him. As if the possibility had never crossed his mind.
A loud cheer erupted from the crowd, pulling you from your thoughts. You blinked and looked toward the field a small smile tugged at your lips.
Maybe Cameron wasn't the only one who needed to stop being hardheaded.
-
The whistle blew, signaling halftime.
You fell into line with the rest of your teammates trying to focus on the performance ahead of you instead of everything else occupying your mind.
The stadium buzzed with excitement.
The band was already preparing to take the field.
Students filled the stands.
You were adjusting your gloves when you felt someone step beside you.
"You done trippin?"
Your eyes cut toward Cameron and a frown pulled at your lips.
The corner of his mouth lifts. "That's the look you got for me?"
You rolled your eyes. Cameron nudged your shoulder hard enough to knock you out of line.
The side eye you gave him was lethal. "You don't have anything else better to do?" you asked.
Cameron shrugged looking down at you. "I was worried about you."
You shook your head stepping back into line. "I thought you said I needed to grow up."
Cameron laughed.
You looked away.
That didn't stop him from stepping directly into your line of sight. "Have you?"
The teasing in his voice made you roll your eyes even harder.
You refused to answer.
Cameron lifted his hand and placed his index finger beneath your chin lifting it until you were looking at him.
"Fix your attitude."
You pressed your lips together, refusing to give him the satisfaction.
One of the coaches yelled for the players, Cameron dropped his hand and took a step back.
"Break a leg." Then he turned and jogged off the field.
Gosh he made it impossible to stay upset.
-
The halftime performance came and went.
Before you knew it, you were back in the stands watching the game.
The final minutes of it felt endless.
You were supposed to be sitting with the rest of the dance team, but at some point you’d found yourself standing.
Along with everyone else.
The score was so close.
The stadium buzzed with nervous energy as the offense lined up one last time.
Your heart pounded.
The ball snapped and the crowd came alive. Players collided at the line, bodies moving in every direction as the play developed. Cameron disappeared behind a wall of jerseys before suddenly breaking free.
The stadium erupted.
The screaming around you got louder as Cameron took off down the field. Every person in the stands seemed to rise to their feet at once.
Twenty yards. Fifteen. Ten. Five.
Touchdown.
The noise that followed was deafening. Students rushed the field while the band poured onto the turf. Teammates swarmed Cameron before he could even celebrate, and within seconds the entire stadium had dissolved into complete celebration.
Beside you, the dance team was losing their minds.
“We won!”
“We really won!”
You laughed as one of your friends nearly knocked into you.
People were everywhere.
You were still celebrating with your teammates when someone suddenly grabbed your wrist.
Your head snapped around. “Cameron-“
He cut you off.
One hand landed on your waist as he pulled you toward him, and before you could process what was happening, his lips were on yours.
You froze, completely caught off guard. The noise of the stadium seem to fade because all you can do is focus on Cameron. The fact that he was kissing you infront of everyone.
When you finally came back to yourself, the laugh that had been threatening to escape you all night disappeared into the kiss instead.
Cameron smiled against your lips like he knew exactly what you were thinking.
The hand on your waist tightened briefly as he pulled you closer. Then, noticing your arms still hanging awkwardly at your sides, Cameron grabbed your wrists and guided them around his neck.
The move pulled you even closer into him.
Your fingers found the back of his neck as you finally relaxed against him. His hand settled against your waist while his lips moved against yours with an ease that made your heart stutter.
Like he wasn’t worried about the crowd, the game, or the fact that half the campus was probably watching.
Your fingers traced along the back of his neck as you pulled him closer, and in the back of your mind you found yourself wondering why you’d spent so much time fighting this.
Especially when kissing him felt this right.
When he finally pulled back, both of you were smiling.
“You done?” you asked, trying and failing to sound annoyed.
Cameron shook his head. “Can you stop acting like that?”
Your brows furrowed. “Acting like what?”
He looked at you like the answer should’ve been obvious. “Stop acting like I don’t want you.”
You stared at him.
Cameron took a breath. “Be mine, I don’t want anybody else.”
He looked nervous and that might’ve been your favorite part of the night.
You laughed.
“Why you laughing?”
You shook your head. “Because.” You smiled. “You really got on national television and made a fool of yourself.”
“A fool of—”
“Yes.” You nod. “A fool.”
Cameron eyes narrow. “You got a funny way of saying yes.”
You smiled wider while you reached up and grabbed his jersey. “Good thing I am saying yes.”
I love reading all the Cameron/tyriq fics, and I have so many ideas in the vault. For me it’s writers block, it takes me forever to plan out my ideas, and I just give up😭. Plus work, life, and love island have had me distracted. Limiting myself to only Cameron Cade has also burnt me out I think, I need to explore more of his characters‼️
Loved this fic, and I love the community we have on here🫶🏾🫶🏾
ೃFEELS LIKE LOVE ᝰ
In which we see the first time they became one
a/n: grown folk shit
To Nala’s credit, she had been talking reckless all week, all damn week, her phone in hand like a lit fuse as she sent him picture after picture, each one less subtle than the last, each one landing in his chest with the blunt, merciless force of a gunshot in a quiet room. There was no real innocence in it, not with the way she posed, not with the way her mouth tilted like she knew exactly what she was doing to him, not with the way she kept feeding that fire and then walking away from the smoke as though she had not set half his self-control ablaze. And because he knew Nala, knew the shape of her boldness and the softer truth living beneath it, he knew this was not the game of some woman hardened by experience and practiced in ruin, but something altogether more dangerous: the half-knowing audacity of a girl who had only barely brushed the edges of desire and still had the power to make a grown man feel dragged by the throat behind it.
He knew, too, that she was not as experienced as he was, and that knowledge sat inside him like a splinter under skin, small enough to seem petty and deep enough to ache whenever he let his mind touch it. Her experience, what little of it there had been, had come in the form of one friend she had asked to take her virginity before college, during some ragged break with her boyfriend, and though Tyriq knew his jealousy over it was irrational, knew it was foolish to resent a history that predated him, there were moments when the thought of it still moved through him like a dark tide, sudden and cold and impossible to dignify. Because damn, baby, if you had waited, he would have made it sacred, would have made it a coronation instead of a transaction, would have turned the whole night into something fit for the stars to witness, the sort of loving that would have left no room in you for regret or uncertainty or the faint bitter taste of being handled without being cherished.
He would have learned her the way sailors once learned coastlines, by patience and reverence and repeated return, by tracing every hidden inlet and every dangerous curve until the whole map of her lived inside his hands. He would have made a study of her, body and breath and blush alike, not the hurried taking of a thing, but the slow discovery of a country too beautiful to invade carelessly. He would have laid her out before him like a temple built by the gods and touched her with the kind of worship that makes religion look small, would have made her feel like a queen in the oldest sense of the word, not merely adorned, but honored, enthroned, treated as though heaven itself had spent extra time getting her right. He would have taken his time with her, Lord, he would have taken all the time the moon could drag across the sea, would have moved over her as gently and thoroughly as tide over sand, wearing away fear, coaxing wonder from every inch, making love to her not like a man proving something, but like a man receiving something holy into his keeping. Not the way she had been given, not in some half-lit compromise with a body that deserved a symphony, but in the full lush language she merited, where tenderness and hunger were not opposites but twins, where desire came dressed in patience and care.
And maybe that was what made his wanting of her so viciously sweet, that he knew just how little had come before him, knew that beyond that one body there had been no long procession of lovers, no crowded history to compete with, only Nala in all her maddening brightness and him with a number he had long since lost count of, an estimate he refused to offer because he already knew it would bruise her feelings in places too tender to joke about. His past was a blurred constellation, too many names swallowed by time and ego and the easy carelessness of a boy who had once mistaken abundance for freedom, while hers was scarcely more than a single star in a wide dark sky, and the contrast between them did not make him feel triumphant, only strangely solemn, almost unworthy in his softer moments, because there was something about her relative innocence that made all his old excess feel tacky and loud by comparison.
So he watched her pictures pile up in the glow of his screen and felt desire move through him with the old violence of myth, like Poseidon striking the sea floor with his trident and calling up waves tall enough to drown ships, like Apollo yanking the sun closer just to see what mortal flesh would do under that much heat. She did not understand, not fully, how she plagued him, how her face and her body and that teasing, half-knowing mouth of hers had begun orbiting his mind like a private moon, pulling at his tides in ways both beautiful and humiliating. She did not understand that every image she sent him felt less like flirting and more like invocation, as though she were summoning from him some older, rougher devotion that wanted not merely to possess her, but to prove itself worthy of the softness she carried so carelessly in her hands. And that was the cruelest part of all, perhaps, that beneath the sexual tension, beneath the ache in his body and the low hot jealousy in his blood, there was still that deeper thing, that emotional eroticism that made wanting her feel less like lust and more like gravity, less like appetite and more like fate. Because Tyriq did not merely want to sleep with Nala. He wanted to undo every lesser touch that had come before him and replace it with something so tender, so consuming, so astronomically right, that she would finally understand the difference between being touched and being adored.
Nala sighed in the video, her hands disappearing in the black lace of her panties, the shirt she wore, his shirt pushed up so he could see her nipples pebble in the moonlight, her breath uneven as she pulled him in closer and closer to his screen, like a siren of some sort, pulling a sailor to their demise. Each arch of her back and press of the vibrator to her clit made her whimper out, her toes curling in the room as she writhed against the cotton of her sheets, her hair around her head like a halo of some sort.
An angel who looked so, so pretty, sinning for him.
“Daddy,” she exhaled through the video.
Tyriq felt himself thicken in his sweats, which was nothing new where Nala was concerned, because his body had belonged to her long before either of them had the language to call it surrender. It had been hers since the beginning, since that first impossible moment he saw her crossing the quad and something in him, something older than reason and far less merciful, rose up with a terrifying certainty and declared that there would be no one else after her, not really, not in any way that mattered. He had looked at her then the way ancient sailors must have looked at the first star that taught them where home was, not with curiosity, but with recognition, with the sickening, holy knowledge that their course had already been altered. And somehow his body had taken that truth and run with it, run a damn mile, because from that day on he found himself answering to her in ways that made every other desire feel counterfeit, dim little candles beside a sun. He did not respond to anything the way he responded to her, not to fantasy, not to memory, not to beauty in the abstract, but to her specifically, to the thought of her mouth, her hands, the dark halo of her curls falling forward when she laughed or leaned in close, the soft wickedness of the way she had started sending him those pictures like she did not understand she was pressing her thumb directly into the pulse of him.
There was something almost humiliating in how completely his body had chosen her, how final the decision had been, as though the gods had taken one look at the two of them and found amusement in making his appetite this faithful. Nala did not have to do much at all, not really, only touch him in passing, only let her fingers linger a second too long against his wrist or the back of his neck, only look at him through those lashes with that half-knowing softness of hers, and desire rose in him like tide answering the moon, immediate and inevitable and beyond all argument. Her hands especially undid him, those beautiful, dangerous hands that painted symphonies onto canvas and poetry into being, those same hands he imagined on him more often than was decent, imagined with the kind of reverence lesser men reserved for prayer. He wanted them everywhere, wanted to feel them learn him the way he ached to learn her, wanted her to understand the scale of the power she held over him simply by being the first person who had ever made hunger feel intimate instead of merely physical. With Nala it was never just lust, never only the blunt ache of flesh, but something stranger and far more consuming, a form of emotional eroticism so deep it made his wanting feel astronomical, as if every inch of him had tilted off its axis and started revolving around the possibility of her touch.
“I love you, Daddy, love you so much,” she smiled into the camera just as she reached her peak. Perhaps this time she’d let him see, but just as her back arched off the bed, the video ended. Tyriq huffed, he let out a painful sound, one he didn’t recognise came from his lips as he took his hands out of his pants, a hand he hadn’t even realised was in there.
He bit his lip as he rewinded the video, right to the one-second split where her eyes shut in ecstasy, right when her peak hit, and he sighed as he raked one hand over his face and slipped his grey sweats down his legs slightly, his dick faintly smacking his lower abdomen as precum beaded from the tip. Spitting in his hand, he wrapped his hand around himself, grunting at the unsatisfactory feeling of it not being her he was wrapped around, not the plush velvet of her walls, not the feel of her wet, tight heat that would undoubtedly suck him in.
Fuck, she would be the best he’d ever had, he knew it, and he knew it well.
That had been twenty-four hours ago, just twenty-four hours ago, he’d wrung himself dry over and over, the groan of her name leaving his lips as his eyes screwed shut, the images of all the positions he’d have her in played like a movie in his mind, a movie he knew wouldn’t do her justice.
He passed her the blunt in the quiet space between them, hoping the smoke might soften her a little, loosen whatever bright restless current had been running through her all week and let her sink more fully into the moment with him. Nala took it from his hand with effortless grace, a grin already gathering at the corners of her mouth as though she knew exactly what he was trying to do and found him sweet for trying anyway. The brown wrap rested against her lips like it belonged there, and Tyriq, watching her, felt that old dangerous pull low in his body, because Nala had a way of making even the simplest things look intimate, as though the world itself became a little more sensual when filtered through the soft dark miracle of her.
She inhaled slowly, smoothly, with none of the awkwardness of somebody trying to look grown, but with the unstudied ease of a girl fully at home in herself, and when she let the smoke go it slipped from her nose in a pale elegant stream that made her look almost mythic in the low light, like some sweet-tempered goddess risen from incense and midnight. Her body eased by degrees before his eyes, tension leaving her inch by inch, first in the drop of her shoulders, then in the loosened line of her spine, then in the lazy deepening of her smile as the smoke curled through the air between them like a private little storm. Tyriq watched the relaxation take hold of her and felt something warm and possessive settle inside him, because he liked this version of Nala too, the softened one, the one who melted open rather than holding herself tight, the one whose laughter came easier and whose eyes turned heavier and more luminous, as though her spirit itself had gone honey-slow.
He took the blunt back when she handed it to him, but his gaze stayed fixed on her, drawn to the fullness of her mouth, to the faint trace of smoke still lingering there, to the way she leaned back and let herself settle into the night like a shore finally receiving the tide. There was something almost astronomical in the hush that followed, the two of them suspended in that dim little orbit of heat, smoke, and wanting, with her body unwinding before him and his own tightening in answer, because even relaxed, even softened, even smiling like that, Nala still had the power to undo him without so much as trying.
He watched as Nala pushed herself upright, slow and deliberate now, the smoke having taken the sharpness out of her edges and left something warmer, looser, more dangerous in its place. Then she came over him, settling astride his hips with the easy confidence of a girl who knew exactly what kind of ruin lived in her and had finally decided to wield it. A grin curved at her lips, soft and wicked and bright enough to make his breath catch before she had even fully touched him, and when she rolled her hips over his, dragging that sweet slow friction across his lap, it felt less like movement and more like invocation, like she was summoning something old and tidal from the depths of him and knew it would answer.
Tyriq had just taken a hit when she leaned in, and before he could even think to steady himself, her mouth was on his. The kiss landed warm and firm and knowing, and the smoke slipped out between their lips in a pale, ghostly ribbon, curling around them like incense around an altar, turning the moment briefly mythic, as though the air itself had decided to worship what was happening between them. Her mouth tasted of smoke and sweetness and that impossible Nala-ness that always seemed to leave him half dazed, and the way she moved against him as she kissed him, hips still grinding slow and sure, made his whole body tighten with the kind of reverent hunger he only ever seemed capable of where she was concerned. She kissed him like a girl teasing at the gates of something holy, and Tyriq, with his hands already finding her waist as though they had been made for no other purpose, could only sink into it and let the smoke and the heat and the soft wicked drag of her body over his make a temple out of the dark.
Tyriq groaned into her mouth the second his hands found her waist, the sound low and helpless and dragged up from someplace deeper than appetite, because Nala had a way of making desire feel less like hunger and more like surrender, like the body bowing before something it recognized as greater than itself. His palms spread over the curve of her, thumbs pressing in just enough to feel the warm, living give of her beneath them, and when she rocked over him again, slower this time, more deliberate, he felt the friction hit him like a prayer answered too quickly, the kind that left a man grateful and half undone in the same breath.
The kiss deepened without either of them seeming to decide it should. Smoke still lingered in the air around them, drifting pale and ribbon-thin through the low light, and Nala’s mouth was soft and wicked against his, her lips parting just enough to make room for the sound he made when she rolled her hips again with that same infuriating, honey-slow pressure. She kissed him like she knew exactly what she was doing to him, like she understood that his body had long since stopped belonging wholly to itself where she was concerned and had accepted that fact with a sort of gleeful tenderness. Her curls fell around them in a dark silken curtain, shutting out the edges of the room until it felt as though the whole world had been reduced to her mouth, his hands, the slow tide of her movement, and the heat rising between them like something almost visible.
“Nala,” he murmured against her lips, but it came out more like a warning he had no intention of enforcing.
She smiled into the kiss, that little wicked smile of hers touching his mouth before she kissed him again, and the sensation of it nearly drove him out of his right mind. There was something devastating in the way she held herself over him, not careless, not crude, but sure in a way that made her seem at once younger and older than she was, a girl discovering the full radius of her power and a woman already fluent in how to wield it. Her hips kept their rhythm, unhurried, almost curious in their patience, as though she were studying the effect she had on him and finding the lesson pleasing enough to repeat. Tyriq’s grip tightened a little at her waist, not enough to stop her, never enough for that, only enough to let her know he was feeling every inch of it, every maddening drag and press and shift of her over his lap.
He broke the kiss only to catch his breath, but Nala gave him no real time to recover, her mouth moving instead to the corner of his, then his jaw, then back again in little grazing kisses that felt more dangerous somehow than anything rougher might have. Tyriq tipped his head back against the couch and let out a breath through his nose, his blue eyes gone darker now, fixed on her face with that awed, wrecked sort of wanting she always drew out of him when she was feeling playful and bold. His hands slid once, slowly, from her waist up the line of her back and down again, as if he needed to convince himself she was really here, really over him like this, really the same girl who could argue with him one minute and make him feel half sanctified the next.
“You keep playin’ with me like that,” he said, voice gone rough and low, “and I’ma forget how to act.”
Nala leaned back just enough to look at him, her lips swollen from kissing, her eyes heavy-lidded and bright with mischief. “That the point.”
Lord.
The words, simple as they were, moved through him like heat through dry brush. He let his gaze drop, following the shape of her where she sat over him, the slow roll of her hips, the way her body had gone soft and languid from the smoke without losing any of that innate precision she carried in everything she did. Even relaxed, she moved like music, like a symphony inhabiting flesh, every motion resolving into the next with the smooth inevitability of tide answering moonlight. Tyriq ran his hands up her sides again, slower now, reverent in his touch, and Nala shivered under it, the grin at her mouth loosening into something softer, more vulnerable, before she leaned down to kiss him again as though she had given away too much in that one involuntary response.
He met her greedily this time, unable not to. His mouth opened under hers with all the pent-up want of a man who had spent too long being teased by pictures and distance and imagination, and the kiss turned richer for it, fuller, their breaths tangling, her lips parting on a small sound that went straight through him. He kissed her until the room felt unsteady, until the smoke in the air seemed to have sunk into his blood, until he could no longer tell whether the warmth swallowing him came from the blunt, from her body on his, or from the old frightening truth that with Nala, everything always felt like the first and only thing that had ever really happened to him.
His mouth left hers only to trail over the line of her cheek and down to her throat, and the second he felt the pulse there flutter under his lips, something in him softened and sharpened all at once. He kissed her there with a tenderness that almost contradicted the tension in his body, but only almost, because with Tyriq desire for her had never been separate from reverence. He wanted her fiercely, yes, but always with that undercurrent of awe, that sense that he was handling something both precious and ruinous, some constellation the gods had lowered into his reach just to see whether he would worship properly or burn. His lips moved against her skin while his hands steadied her at the waist, guiding nothing, only receiving what she gave, and Nala tipped her head just enough to let him, her fingers slipping up into the buzz of his hair and tightening there when he kissed the place beneath her ear.
The little sound she made then nearly finished him.
He drew back just enough to look at her again, his breaths slower than he wanted them to be and far less steady. “You know you drive me crazy, right?”
Nala’s smile returned, softer now, not quite as teasing as before, but somehow more dangerous for that. “You let me.”
He laughed under his breath, the sound warm and wrecked, and lifted one hand from her waist to cup her jaw. “Nah, baby,” he murmured, brushing his thumb over her bottom lip before kissing her once, slow and deep and full of too much feeling. “You been had the keys.”
And because that was the truth of it, because she had always had the keys, because his body and his heart and his patience all seemed to answer to her before they answered to him, Tyriq let her set the pace again. He let her move over him in those maddening slow arcs, let the kiss keep building and building without rushing toward collapse, let the tension stretch long and golden between them until it felt almost orchestral, every breath and brush of skin another instrument joining in. The room had gone hushed except for them, for the faint drag of fabric, the soft catch of breath, the occasional quiet sound neither of them seemed able to hold back. Outside, the world no doubt went on in all its ordinary ways, but in there it felt as though they had slipped briefly off the map of time and into some private little cosmos where only longing and laughter and the slow worship of each other mattered.
When Nala finally rested her forehead against his for a second, breathing him in, Tyriq closed his eyes and held her there, one hand at the nape of her neck, the other spread low and steady at her waist. The smoke still hung faintly around them, the last of it curling through the room like the afterimage of invocation, and he kissed her once more, softer now, with all the ache and affection and devotion he never seemed to know how to hide when she got this close.
And still, even with her over him, even with the heat of her and the taste of smoke and sweetness on her mouth, even with his whole body alive to the fact of her, what moved through him most powerfully was not only want, but recognition, that same old terrible recognition that had been haunting him since the quad, since the first look, since the first impossible moment he understood that whatever this was, it was going to alter the whole landscape of him and never once ask permission.
Nala made a small disgruntled noise, her brows pulling together as she shifted against him and felt the stubborn, unmistakable evidence of exactly what her slow teasing had done.
“Move your arm.”
Tyriq looked up at her then, blue eyes bright with lazy amusement, his hands still settled warm and steady at her waist, and the corner of his mouth lifted in a way that told her he had been waiting, patiently and shamelessly, for her to notice. “That ain’t my arm,” he said.
For one suspended second she only stared at him, scandal blooming over her face in the prettiest way, all wide eyes and parted lips and the dawning realization that she had quite thoroughly set her own trap and walked clean into it. Then she sucked her teeth and tried to look offended, though the flush rising warm beneath her skin ruined any hope of conviction. Tyriq, of course, only looked more pleased, the sort of pleased a beautiful, wicked man got when the woman sitting in his lap accidentally gave voice to the exact thing he wanted her thinking about.
“Oh my God,” Nala muttered, but there was laughter threatening at the edges of it now, soft and breathless and no real match for the heat between them.
Tyriq’s hands tightened just slightly at her waist, not enough to hold her in place against her will, only enough to remind her that he was feeling all of this too, every little drag of her body over his, every teasing movement she had offered him with that grin on her mouth and smoke on her breath. “Now why you actin’ surprised?” he asked, his voice low and rough with amusement, but carrying that darker undercurrent she always heard when he was trying very hard not to sound as affected as he was. “You been slidin’ around up here all sweet and wicked like you forgot I’m a man.”
That made her huff, though the sound came out embarrassingly soft. “I did not forget.”
“Nah,” he murmured, lifting one hand from her waist to tip her chin up with two fingers, making her meet his gaze properly. “I think you remembered real good. I think you just ain’t expect me to say it out loud.”
Nala rolled her eyes, but the blush deepened all the same, and Tyriq drank it in like it was something costly and rare. He always did love this part of her, the contrast of it, the way she could talk big and move bold and then still go sweet at the edges when he brought her fully face to face with the effect she had on him. There was something deeply feminine in that combination, something soft and dangerous both, and it made him want to pull her even closer and just sit in the sight of her for a while.
Instead he smiled, slow and devastating, and let his hand drift from her chin to the side of her neck, thumb stroking there in an absent, reverent line. “You want me to move it?” he asked.
The question hung between them with all the mischief of a match held near dry grass.
Nala looked at him for a long moment, then at the wicked little glint in his face, then away again as if the night outside might save her from answering. “Tyriq.”
That was not an answer, and they both knew it.
He laughed under his breath, warm and low, and leaned up just enough to brush his mouth over hers again, one slow kiss, then another, as though he meant to soften the embarrassment out of her before she decided to go hiding behind attitude. “That’s what I thought,” he murmured against her lips.
She made another offended little sound, but this time it dissolved halfway through because he kissed her again, and because his hand at her neck and the other at her waist had gone so careful, so steady, so impossibly gentle for a man sitting there looking as pleased and ruined as he did. Nala felt the whole of herself soften at that, the playful indignation slipping through her fingers the way it always did when he touched her like he was handling something beloved rather than merely wanted.
When he pulled back, his forehead came to rest lightly against hers, and the smile still playing at his mouth gentled into something more intimate, more openly admiring. “You be drivin’ me out my damn mind,” he said quietly.
Nala’s lashes fluttered. “You let me.”
Tyriq’s grin returned at once. “Yeah,” he said. “And you enjoy that way too much.”
She should have denied it. She should have given him something sharp, something clever, something that kept the upper hand where she preferred it. Instead she only looked at him, all curls and smoke-soft eyes and mouth still warm from kissing, and Tyriq felt another swell of affection move through the wanting, making the whole thing richer and somehow more dangerous too. Because that was always the truth of it with them, wasn’t it, that even in the middle of all this heat and tension and teasing, love sat underneath it like deep water beneath moonlight, holding everything up.
He slid his hand down her back in one slow pass, not pushing, not urging, only soothing, only learning her again through touch because he never seemed able to stop. “Come here,” he murmured, though she was already there, already in his lap, already close enough that their breaths touched. “Quit lookin’ at me like I’m the one caused this.”
Nala finally laughed outright then, the sound bright and soft and a little breathless, and the victory in Tyriq’s face at having coaxed that laugh out of her was almost worse than the teasing had been. Almost.
“You’re terrible,” she told him.
He tilted his head, considering that with mock seriousness, then kissed the corner of her mouth in a way that made the insult sound suspiciously like praise. “Maybe,” he said. “But you still up here.”
And Lord, she was. Still in his lap, still under his hands, still letting the night stretch long and warm and intimate around them while his smile lingered and her blush refused to fade. The room seemed to pulse quietly with the afterglow of smoke and laughter and all that sweet unbearable awareness between them, and for one golden suspended moment, neither of them appeared in any great hurry to move at all.
“You gon’ touch it?” he whispered against her lips, the question brushing her mouth so softly it somehow felt more dangerous than if he had said it plain.
Nala’s brows furrowed at once, not in rejection exactly, but in that sweet, uncertain confusion of a girl standing at the edge of something she wanted and did not yet know how to name without blushing. She turned her face slightly, her breath catching against his cheek, curls slipping forward like a curtain between them.
“I don’t really—”
Tyriq stilled beneath her.
It was immediate, the way all the teasing left his face, all the smug little amusement softening into something quieter, more attentive, more careful. His hand, which had been resting warm at her waist, slid up her back in one slow, grounding pass, not urging, not insisting, only reminding her that she was safe enough to hesitate with him. That, more than anything, was what made him dangerous, not simply that he knew how to make her blush, but that he knew how to slow himself when her uncertainty rose to meet his wanting.
“I got you… i’mma teach you, baby,” he whispered as he pressed his lips to her mouth and planted a chaste kiss, a grin on his lips as he watched her sink to her knees, her hand in his pants as she tugged his sweats down.
“Oh. Wow,” Her eyes widened slightly. It was long as it was thick, slightly curved, a little like a rainbow and suddenly it made sense why he walked with all that swagger and confidence. It looked heavy… so heavy.
“Pass me that, please,” she motioned to the blunt politely. Tyriq chuckled as he handed it to her, and she removed her eyes from it. His chuckle turned into a laugh as she took a hit, narrowing her eyes at her challenge.
“What do girls usually say ?”
“Huh?”
“When they see it?”
Tyriq closed his eyes, a chuckle leaving his lips as he cocked his head to the side to watch her, “Oh shit,” he drawled sexily, and Nala nodded as she took another hit, and Tyriq grinned at her, “You funny baby.”
“Okay,” Nala whispered to herself, “If I can double major in chemical engineering and music, I can do this.”
“I mean you don’t gotta-”
“No, I want to. And I can. You know, I climbed Hook Mountain?”
Tyriq laughed harder as Nala drew in more weed smoke, letting it run through her sinuses, unable to look away from it. It was a darker shade of peach, mirroring his skin tone, the tip mauve and flushed as it throbbed, waiting for her to make contact.
“It’s pretty,” she whispered.
“Yeah?”
“Mhm,” Nala hummed as she blinked, wondering whether he knew what to do with all that. Of course, he did; it was why he had such a long roster before her. It's why women still mourned him, even though all he gave them was a night of half-assed pleasure.
“Nala.”
“Hm?”She hummed as she chewed her lip.
“Come.” Tyriq reached for the blunt, ashing it out before bending over to kiss her, relaxing her immediately and dissipating the reverie she was in and bringing her back to him, back to where they were.
“Come here, pretty girl,” he whispered, guiding her hand onto him. She bit her lip as she watched her hand with half-lidded eyes, unsure grasp growing more confident as he let out the first few low groans of the night.
Nala watched him come undone, his eyes squeezing shit as he let out a low raspy “Oh shit baby.” Nala felt a flurry of confidence hum through her body as she watched him. Licking from base to tip, she took her time and took his bulbous head into her mouth, swirling her head around his crown. Almost instantly, he relaxed further, leaning his head back, revealing the veins in his neck.
She wrapped her lips around him, easing her head down slowly, urging her throat to relax as she welcomed him down as she used all her saliva and her throat muscles, twisting her hands at the base, making up for what her mouth couldn’t conquer yet.
“Mama, shit, just like that baby, ‘s your dick,” Tyriq whispered as he lifted his head up to look down at her. Droplets of her spit ran down her fingers as she used it on the rest of him she couldn’t reach. A few droplets dripped down from his shaft onto his balls as she gagged and moaned around him, almost as if she was inhaling him as their mixed juices coated her cheeks.
Tyriq felt hazy; he felt overwhelmed because, truly, no one had or would ever do it as well as Nala. He watched as she took his dick like she’d been born for it, welcoming it down her tight throat. He groaned at the feeling of it moulding into his shape. Fuck, where had she been all his life?
He watched as she lifted a saliva-coated hand onto his own that were curled into fists at his side, unravelling it and putting it in her hair that she’d pulled back by a headband. Understanding what she wanted from him, he slowly pushed her head down as she began deepthroating him. He felt his crown touch her uvula as her nose touched his crotch, and her eyes shut momentarily, content to stay there, her eyes watering as tears ran down her cheeks.
When she pulled herself off, she continued to jerk him, tears staining her face as she sniffled slightly. She sucked him again, her hand reaching for his balls as he jerked against her. A loud “Fuck!” left his lips, all decorum and sense leaving him as he thrusted into her mouth, fucking her as she focused on relaxing her throat for him. Humming as her tongue traced his veins and focused on suckling at his tip as he withdrew from her mouth.
She looked a mess, a fucking mess, but fuck if it didn’t make his heart swell, “There you go, baby,” he whispered as he looked down at her. Her brown eyes meeting his blue, he felt the coil in his belly tighten, and he whined as she continued to jerk him. “I’m gonna cum, baby, gonna cum.”
Before Nala could pull back, he shot ropes of cum down her throat. She slowed her pace, moaning to herself as she tasted him. Loving the way he tasted, she suckled him harder for more. Tyriq twitched as he reached down and shot his hand down to ease her up and off him.
Not thinking too much of it, Nala pulled him onto her, forcing their lips together as she swiped some of his cum into his own mouth, moaning against his lips as he took it with no complaints. He found himself tilting his head to deepen his kiss against her lips as he moaned against her. Now, if it had been anyone else, he wouldn’t have gone for it, not at all; hell, he would’ve discreetly ducked them and put them on all fours, but with her, something in him wanted more, he wanted to consume her, to fuse their bodies as one just so she could feel how devoted he was to her pleasure, a devoted worshipper to his deity. Ever the greedy bastard, he wanted more, more of her lips on him, more of her body on him, more of whatever she would give him.
More, more, more.
He felt like she cast a spell on him, because fuck she was bringing him out of character, so so out of character.
He moaned into her mouth as he lifted her, the sound low and unguarded, dragged from somewhere deep enough to make Nala gasp before the gasp melted into a bright little giggle against his lips. Her laughter was soft and breathy and half-stolen by the kiss, and Tyriq smiled into it, even as he held her tighter, one arm secure beneath her, the other braced at her back as he moved through her apartment with the easy confidence of a man who knew it as well as he knew the shape of his own hands. He did not need light to guide him, not really. He knew where the walls narrowed, where the rug caught slightly beneath his shoes, where the turn into her room came, because he had been here enough for her space to have become part of his own private geography, another map of belonging committed to memory.
By the time he reached her bedroom, the kiss had softened into something slower and more lingering, their mouths parting and finding each other again in little hungry, smiling reunions, as though neither of them could quite bear to stop touching long enough to speak. The room itself welcomed them in quiet beauty. Soft linens waited on the bed, pale and rumpled in the low light, and the walls held pictures of them in scattered frames, candid little fragments of joy and youth and devotion, snapshots of the life they were building almost by instinct, long before they had any right to know how serious it would become. Here they were laughing in one frame, pressed cheek to cheek in another, his arm around her waist in one, her head tipped toward his shoulder in the next. It was, in its own tender way, a museum of their love, every image a small holy artifact of the fact that they had already begun leaving evidence of each other everywhere.
Tyriq paused there for half a breath, Nala still in his arms, her curls spilling over his wrist, her face warm and luminous from laughter and kisses, and something in him gentled at the sight of all those pieces of them hung up around the room like proof. Not just desire. Not just heat. But history, even in its youth. Devotion, even in its unfinished form. He looked at the photographs, then back at her, and whatever she saw in his face made her smile soften too, made the playful brightness in her settle into something quieter, deeper, more intimate. Because that was the thing about them, that even in moments charged with all the ache of wanting, love still sat beneath everything like deep water under moonlight, steady and vast and impossible to ignore.
He kissed her again then, slower this time, not because the wanting had eased, but because the room itself seemed to ask for reverence. His mouth moved over hers with that same consuming tenderness he always reserved for the moments when lust and love became impossible to separate, and Nala, feeling the pictures of them watching like little witnesses from the walls, wrapped her arms more fully around his neck and let herself melt into him. In that room, with their shared history looking on from every frame and the bed waiting soft as a promise, it felt less like he was carrying her into a bedroom and more like he was carrying her deeper into something they had already been building all along.
He lowered her onto the bed with a care that made the whole moment feel more intimate than urgency ever could, as though even now, even with want pulling hard at both of them, some part of him remained reverent in her presence. Then he straightened and pulled his hoodie up and over his head in one smooth motion, revealing the warm bronze of his skin, toned and cleanly cut in the low light. The sight of him made it somehow more devastating by how familiar and unattainable it had once seemed to her all at once. Nala’s tongue swept lightly over her lips before she could stop herself, her eyes fixed on him as though he were not merely a boy in her bedroom but some beautiful punishment sent by the gods, some private Adonis standing at the edge of everything she had not known enough to wait for.
And as she looked at him, her thoughts drifted backward with a cruelty memory specialized in, back to the last time she had been in this room for something like this, though nothing about that night now seemed worthy of sharing language with the one unfolding before her. It had not been awful, not in the dramatic sense, not violent, not catastrophic, but it had not been good either, not in the way sacred things ought to be good. At the time, she and that friend had not even been romantically drawn to one another, not truly, and the whole thing had been carried out with the dull practical logic of somebody checking a box she had convinced herself needed checking before life could properly begin. She had treated her virginity like a task, a threshold to get over before college, something cumbersome to be handled and set aside, something she ought to be able to say she had done simply for the sake of having done it. There had been no wonder in it, no devotion, no trembling sense that her body deserved to be met with patience and awe, only the vague anxious determination of a girl trying to rid herself of what the world had made sound like a burden.
But now, with Tyriq standing there in the soft half-light of her bedroom, with the pictures of them on the walls like little witnesses to the life they had been building, with his gaze on her so full of heat and tenderness it made her pulse stumble, she had never regretted anything more. Because now she understood, with a clarity almost painful in its lateness, what it should have been, what it could have been had she waited for the right hands, the right mouth, the right heart. It should have felt like this, like the air itself had changed in anticipation, like desire and reverence had found one another and refused to separate. It should have been given to someone who looked at her the way Tyriq looked at her, as though even her smallest softness deserved ceremony, as though touching her was not some casual indulgence but a privilege that asked something serious of the man receiving it.
She hated, in that moment, the careless little practicality with which she had once handled something that now seemed almost holy in retrospect. Hated that she had let a milestone meant for tenderness be reduced to an errand. Hated that a version of her, younger and more frightened and eager to seem unbothered, had handed away what Tyriq would have treated like a crown. Because looking at him now, really looking at him, she knew in her bones that he would have made it beautiful. He would have taken his time with her. He would have learned the language of her body like a man studying scripture he intended to live by. He would have looked after not only the flesh of her but the feeling of her, the emotions beneath the nerves, the softness beneath the wanting, all of it held with that same impossible mixture of hunger and devotion that seemed to be his native tongue where she was concerned.
And that was the cruelest part of all, perhaps, that regret did not come to her because she wished herself untouched for purity’s sake or innocence’s, but because Tyriq had shown her, simply by loving her, how worthy she had always been of more than what she had accepted. He stood there before her now, beautiful enough to ruin peace, breathing a little harder, his chest lit warm by the bedside lamp, and Nala felt the full force of that realization move through her like tide through open water: she had not understood her own value then. But she understood it now, and because she understood it now, the wanting that rose in her was sharpened by grief and softened by longing both. She did not merely want him in the shallow physical sense, though Lord knew she wanted him. She wanted to be met by him in all the places she had once let herself be overlooked, wanted him to undo, by tenderness alone, every lesser thing that had come before him.
So she looked at him from the bed with her mouth parted slightly and her curls spread around her like dark silk, and Tyriq, whatever else he may have seen in her face, saw enough to go still for one quiet beat, because there are moments when desire is not merely desire, but recognition, when two people realize at once that what stands between them is not only heat, but the ache of what should have always been theirs to discover together.
He watched her for a moment, his eyes tracing over her figure; she was clad in nothing but his shirt. One he’d left behind during their many nights together. The smell of his cologne and her own scent mixing had his dick hardening more as he watched her. He watched the way her thighs rubbed together to ease the throb she felt between her legs. He watched as she nervously bit her lip, her eyes darting down to his dick and back to his eyes, then back again.
“Eyes up here, baby.” He reminded her as he took a seat by her bed, fully baring herself to him, leaving not an inch of flesh unseen, leaving her to map him out as he did her.
He nodded to her drawer.
“Touch yourself for me, baby… show me what you been doin’ in them videos.”
Nala’s eyes widened as her lips parted, her soul leaving her body as she pouted.
Tyriq watched her with a grin as he tilted his head to the side, licking his lips, fighting the urge to reach for her as her brown eyes looked up at him.
“I don’t like repeating myself, Nalani, are we gon’ have a problem?”
She shook her head as she gazed at him, and he tsked, “Words, baby.”
“N-no, daddy, we’re not gon’ have a problem,” she whispered as she looked at him.
“So why the fuck you just layin’ there? I told you to do something, didn’t I?”
Nala nodded as she swallowed thickly, her hand reaching for the vibrator she kept tucked away in her drawer; watching it buzz to life, she shut her eyes momentarily, taking a breath, and when she opened them, she set them on him, biting her lip, she lifted her shirt from her head, leaving her bare for him.
Spreading her legs, she brought the bulbous head of the wand to her clit, a moan of ecstasy left her lips as she fought her eyes to stay on his. Her legs shook as she fought the impending orgasm that had rushed in on her, the wire in her lower belly growing taunter and taunter as she fisted her sheets. With a whine, she watched as he wrapped a hand around himself using her saliva from earlier. He began slowly, relieving himself, flicking his wrist and mimicking how tight he imagined she'd be as he watched her pussy throb with the new stimulation.
“That’s it, you’re doing it right pretty girl, don’t worry,” he reassured her as she let out a whine and nodded as she spread her legs from him further, watching as he licked his lips, his eyes flickering from her wet heat to her eyes and back again, over and over like he couldn’t decide what he wanted to look at more. He licked his lips as he cocked his head to the side, a gesture he found himself doing over and over tonight. He blamed it on the pure disbelief, pure and utter disbelief that he was here, with her, after all this time, after all the wet dreams where the sweet ambrosia of her lingered on all his senses, too real to be fake.
“What you be thinking ‘bout when you play with my pussy baby?”
Nala bit her lip as her hair fell behind her, the coil in her belly wound tighter, “You, daddy, I think about you,” she sighed as another wave of pleasure rolled through her body. “I think about you touching me, think about you holding my hand while you fuck me, daddy – f-fuck!” she whined as her walls spasmed around nothing, her orgasm building up as she felt her toes curl.
“You gon’ cum for daddy baby?”
“Mhm,” she whined.
“Words, Nala.”
“Yes, daddy, ‘m gon’ cum for you.”
“Then do that shit, baby, you doin’ good baby, so good,” he groaned as his own release snapped in tandem with hers, his vision blanking for a moment as he yelled out a “Fuck!” as he painted his hand with pretty ribbons of white just as she let out a squeal and writhed away from the contact of the wand.
For a moment, there was silence, pure and utter silence, as he stared at her and she stared at the roof, unable to make eye contact with how they’d tainted one another. For a moment, Nala wondered if this was what her first time was supposed to feel like, if it was supposed to feel this… sinful, this wild and ravenous, almost all-consuming as she became a woman she didn’t recognise, a woman who thought with lust first and logic later.
Tyriq watched as she brought herself up on her knees and crawled over to him, taking his tainted hand and licked from the base of his palm to the top of his fingertip, humming in pure pleasure as she opened her eyes to meet his as she licked his hand clean for him, wrapping her tongue around the perfectly manicured digit and humming in delight.
“You so nasty baby,” Tyriq whispered, and Nala grinned, pure unadulterated bliss on her face as Tyriq pulled his hand away and wrapped it around her throat, careful to stick to the allotted pressure points as he brought her lips to his in a slow kiss as he laid her back down onto her bed, his hands brushing her sides as he finally lifted the shirt over her head, his fingers grazing her sides, making her body shiver in anticipation
Her eyes met his.
A clash of brown with blue, polar opposites, but at this moment, they had never been more harmonious.
“You’re so beautiful… you don’t know what you do to me,” he whispered as he kissed her once again. She sucked at his tongue, almost like she’d been deprived of him for so long; it was insatiable at its finest. He gently ran a finger through her folds, groaning against her lips, purely satisfied as her juices gathered on his fingertips.
Nala giggled, placing pecs on his lips as her stomach fluttered from the praise. Watching as he brought the fingers to his mouth, groaning as he looked down at her, making a silent vow to bury his face in her pussy and taste the nectar from the source, but now, looking down at her, all he wanted was to bury himself inside her, his baby, his girl, his beautiful girl.
“‘M gonna love you right, baby,” he whispered, the words warm against her skin as he kissed his way upward with a patience that felt almost sacred.
There was nothing hurried in him then, nothing careless, nothing that suggested he was touching her just to arrive somewhere else. Tyriq moved over her as though every inch of her deserved to be known properly, his mouth lingering where insecurity had once taught her to flinch, where the world had tried and failed to convince her she should be less tender with herself. He gave special reverence to the parts of her most women were taught to apologize for, the soft dimples in her skin, the pale silvered traces time and growth had written along her thighs, handling them not like flaws to be overlooked, but like proof that her body had lived, stretched, softened, become.
And Nala, feeling that kind of attention, that kind of unembarrassed devotion, could only lie there and take it in with trembling breath, because this was what she had not known enough to ask for before, this slow and deliberate worship, this sense of being beheld instead of merely seen. Tyriq touched her like a man who understood that love and desire were not enemies, that tenderness could be every bit as consuming as hunger, and that the sweetest way to undress a woman was often to remove her shame first.
“Don’t hide from me,” he murmured softly, lifting his head just enough to look at her. “Ain’t nothin’ about you I’m not thanking God for.”
“Tyriq?”
“Yes, my love?” he whispered, intertwining their fingers.
“I-I wanna be on top.”
Tyriq paused for a moment, his eyes full of so much love it hurt, and looked into hers.
“Are you sure? You don’t have to impress me, baby, ‘m already so proud of you.”
“I’m sure… wanna learn how to take you…at my own pace.”
He looked at her for a long moment, the weight of it quiet and searching, as though he were trying to decide not whether he wanted her, because that had long since ceased to be a question, but whether he could bear the responsibility of handling her in exactly the way she deserved. In her eyes, nerves moved like startled fish beneath clear water, quick and silver and impossible to miss, and her hands, small against the breadth of him, traced the vein along his wrist with absent, tender concentration, as if she were soothing herself by learning the proof of his pulse beneath her fingertips. It softened him instantly. The sight of her like that, wanting and uncertain, open and afraid of being too open, touched something in him deeper than hunger, something almost solemn, and whatever fire had been driving him gentled into care.
“Nala,” he said softly, her name low in his mouth, more prayer than sound.
She looked up at him at once, lashes trembling, and the vulnerability in her face nearly undid him, because there was trust there, real trust, the kind that made a man straighten inside himself and ask whether he was worthy of the thing being placed in his hands. Tyriq lifted one of her hands from his arm and pressed his mouth to the center of her palm, then turned it and kissed her wrist, lingering there just long enough for her to feel that he was not rushing her, not pulling her toward some finish line she had not yet chosen, but meeting her where she was, fully.
“You ain’t gotta be scared with me,” he murmured, brushing his thumb over her knuckles. “We got time.”
That was what made the room change, not desire, because desire had been there from the beginning, bright and restless as a star burning low over water, but the patience of him, the way he held his wanting in careful hands and offered it to her as something she could enter gently rather than be overtaken by. Nala let out the faintest breath, and her fingers curled more securely around his. Her nerves did not vanish, but they softened at the edges, made less frightening by the fact that he saw them and did not turn away, did not mock them, did not pretend not to notice. He only stayed there above her, warm and steady and impossibly attentive, looking at her as though the most important thing in the room was not what might happen next, but whether she felt safe enough to let it.
And when her thumb moved again over that vein in his wrist, slower this time, Tyriq smiled, faint and tender, because he understood then that she was not pulling away at all. She was choosing. Slowly, carefully, bravely choosing.
He repositioned them, lying flat on her bed as she bent down and kissed him, guiding his shaft between her legs as she rubbed him through her folds, once, twice, thrice and eventually she slowly sank onto him, inch by inch, splitting her open as they moaned in sync.
Determined to be flush with his thighs, she brought herself up slightly and sank down further onto him. Her hand held his, squeezing as she looked into his eyes, nothing but love and lust swam in his gaze.
“You alright, baby? Is it hurting?”
She whimpered and shook her head, her curls spilling around her face and shoulders in a dark unruly cloud, painting her in a halo so lush and wicked it seemed almost perverse, as though heaven itself had been remade in softer, more dangerous colors just to ruin him properly. And Tyriq, looking at her there, breath unsteady and beauty trembling at the edges, thought with a kind of helpless reverence that if this was the closest he ever got to paradise, he would take it without complaint, would fall to his knees before it gladly, would call it holy all the same. If all he was ever promised was this angel in his lap, this girl with starlight in her eyes and sin in the shape of her mouth, this soft devastating creature made equal parts tenderness and temptation, then he would count himself blessed beyond measure. Because Nala, in that moment, did not look like something merely mortal or passing, but like the answer to every prayer he had not known enough to form properly, something celestial lowered into his arms for no reason but mercy, and he loved her with the frightening certainty of a man who would rather perish at the gates of heaven than be turned away from the sight of her.
“I know, I know, baby,” she soothed her, his hand running down her side and up again, soothing her the best he could as her wet heat consumed more and more of him, “You’re taking me so good, baby, so good.”
He sat up as she finally made it to the bottom of him, his dick nestled in her warm walls, and he swore under his breath. Her hand still in his as she used him for leverage as she slowly moved up and down his shaft, his eyes met her shut ones as she moved, ecstasy all on her face, and as they became one for the first time, Nala could not stop the future from rushing in, bright and certain as dawn over open water. Seated above him, held in the full, trembling gravity of the moment, she felt time split strangely in two, one part of her still here in the warm hush of his room, in the unsteady rhythm of their breathing, in the way his hands steadied her as though she were something precious and half-divine, and the other part already leaping forward into all the years that seemed, suddenly, not imagined at all, but promised.
She could see it so clearly that it frightened her.
A house.
Children.
Mrs. Withers in place of Devereaux, her name changed not by loss but by belonging, by the quiet holy fact of choosing and being chosen in return. She could see him coming home to her, coming home to their family, broad shoulders filling the doorway, his face softening the second his eyes found hers. She could see the small rituals of a life built together, his kiss against her forehead in the morning, against her mouth when he came back at night, against her temple when he had been wrong, against her cheek when words were too clumsy to carry all he meant.
Hello.
Goodbye.
I’m sorry.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
The words moved through her like prayer, like tide, like something older than speech and deeper than sense, until she could no longer tell whether she was thinking them or hearing them in the chambers of her own heart.
I love you.
I love you.
“I love you,” she whispered.
And because she was above him, because she could see all of him so clearly from there, the devotion in his face, the wonder, the tenderness, the almost disbelieving way he looked at her as though heaven had lowered something into his hands he had no right to deserve, the confession left her in a trembling hush, soft and helpless and true. It was not simply desire speaking, nor even the sweetness of the hour, but recognition, that terrible and beautiful recognition that this was the boy she could already see threaded through every tomorrow she wanted.
He looked up at her like she was something heaven had handed him with shaking hands, like even now, with her above him and the future trembling open between them, he could hardly believe she was real and his all at once. His palms moved slowly over her, not hurried, not greedy, but reverent, as though he was trying to memorize the exact shape of this moment before time could come and take it from him.
“Nala,” he whispered, and her name sounded different in his mouth then, fuller, richer, like it had finally found the place it was always meant to live.
His hand rose to cup her face, his thumb brushing softly beneath her eye, and when he spoke again his voice had gone low and unguarded, the voice of a boy too young for all that feeling and yet carrying it anyway like a vow.
“I wanna be everything good to you, baby,” he murmured, his lips grazing hers between each word. “Wanna be the reason you smile to yourself in the middle of the day. Wanna be the one you call when the world too loud. Wanna be the one you come home to, the one you reach for in your sleep, the one that make this whole life feel softer on you.”
He kissed her then, once, twice, three times, each press of his mouth slow and deliberate, as though he needed to seal every word into her lips before he let the next one go.
“I wanna be your peace,” he whispered against her mouth. “Your comfort. Your best friend. Your safety. I wanna be the one that knows how to hold you when you’re laughing and when you’re crying, when you’re sweet and when you’re mean, when you don’t know what to do with all that heart in your chest.”
Nala’s breath trembled, and Tyriq kissed the corner of her mouth, then the center again, lingering there like he could live off her breath alone.
“I wanna be where all your roads lead,” he said softly. “I wanna be the thought that settles you down at night and the first thing on your mind when morning comes. I wanna be in every piece of your life, every dream, every plan. I want all of it, baby. All of you.”
His forehead rested against hers for a moment, his eyes heavy and wrecked and so full of feeling she could hardly stand to look at him, and when he spoke again the words came out like confession.
“I love you,” he whispered.
Then he kissed it against her lips.
“I love you.”
Another kiss, slower this time, deeper only with feeling.
“I love you.”
Again.
And again.
And again, until it stopped sounding like a sentence and started sounding like prayer, like prophecy, like something his mouth had been made to say only to hers. He kissed the words into her so many times they seemed to melt into her skin, into her breath, into the very space between them.
“I love you, Nalani,” he said, voice breaking now under the weight of it. “I love you so bad I don’t even know where I end with it. I love you in every way I know how and in some ways I ain’t even got language for yet. I just know it’s you. It’s been you.”
And still he kept kissing her, tender and desperate and full of worship, like her lips were the only altar he intended to kneel at for the rest of his life.
She quickened her pace and angle as they kissed, eager to bring him to his peak, eager to make them closer than they were right now, to feel his love flood her senses.
“Goddamn baby,” he whispered against her lips. “Who taught you how to move like this?”
No one, truly, no one, but she’d been reading books; she'd looked up a few tricks before jumping into the deep end with this with him.
With every movement, her breasts ran up and down his bare chest, the pert nipples rubbing against him as he leaned back to watch his member disappear between her slippery folds. He felt the coil in his lower belly tighten and tighten as he watched her fuck him, his vision grew hazier and hazier as he blindly grabbed for her phone she’d carelessly thrown on the bed when he first got here and pressed record, propping it up against a surface.
She looked beautiful like this, her hands planted on his shoulders, sweaty, a faint streak of his cum on her cheek as her hair covered them both, the wet plap plap plap of their bodies meeting over and over sounded like a symphony.
They made the best music Nala’s ever made with their moans, heavy breaths and the sound of their flesh meeting over and over. The rhythm was perfect as she opened her eyes and looked straight into the camera he’d propped up. Her mouth hung open slightly while she continued riding him. Each time she came down, she fell more and more in love with the feeling of them, how he felt inside her. She loved him, loved him so so much.
“I’m gonna cum Nala, f-fuck slow down baby,” he groaned and Nala shook her head, picking up the pace, grinding her hips while she was riding him her ass clapping as she rode him and Tyriq shut his eyes for a moment, willing himself to last longer than the five minutes she’d been on top of him; however as his eyes opened and his gaze landed on her mirror, the one usually parked by her bed, he knew that wasn’t happening.
The view was absurd, truly absurd, and it was enough to undo him. Her pussy splitting open to swallow his dick and coat it in her juices, marking it as hers over and over. Her thighs smacking down onto his as her ass sounded like a damn applause every time she sank down, he was hypnotised, purely hypnotised by her. He sighed in pure ecstasy, “Look how pretty she is baby, fuck, you fuckin’ daddy so good baby, so good”
Nala let out a moan at the praise, eager for more, she made sure to tighten her walls around him, gripping him even tighter as she dropped her body onto his.
“That’s how you gon’ do me, baby? It’s like that?” he whimpered.
“Mhm.”
“Where you want it baby?”
“Inside, inside, please, Tyriq… let me have your child,” she whispered against his lips, and the words were not born of reason, not of the practical, daylight part of her mind that understood timing and consequence and all the sensible things people liked to pretend ruled love. They came from somewhere far softer and far more dangerous, that honey-warm place he always carried her to, where thought lost its hard edges and everything she felt became huge, tidal, impossible to contain. Nala was not thinking straight, not in any way that would have satisfied logic, because Tyriq had a way of undoing the neat architecture of her restraint and leaving only the truest things standing. And the truest thing in her, in those moments, was not just that she loved him, but that she could see a whole life with him so vividly it felt less like imagination and more like memory arriving early.
That was what overwhelmed her most, not merely the wanting of him, but the way he made the future flash bright behind her eyes like constellations suddenly arranged into a language she could finally read. She would be breathless and half-dazed with him, all soft with feeling and too full of love to hold it properly, and in an instant her mind would leap past the room, past the hour, past their nineteen and twenty years, and land somewhere sunlit and holy. A baby in his arms. Their baby. Brown skin and soft curls and sleepy eyes, a little face made from both of them, a child born not just from flesh but from devotion. She would see Tyriq laughing low and tired in the morning, one hand on the back of a tiny head. She would see herself standing in a kitchen that belonged to them, barefoot and warm, while a child called for her from somewhere down the hall. She would see him coming home to her, coming home to them, his whole face changing at the sight of his family like the day had only become real once he stepped back into their orbit.
And because Nala loved like a woman born with poetry in her bloodstream, because she had never known how to want halfway, those visions did not feel abstract or distant. They felt immediate. Lush. Frighteningly possible. She was drunk on him in the purest sense, not simply dizzy with desire, but undone by the sheer sweetness of loving someone enough to want permanence from him, enough to ache for proof that what lived between them could take on breath and heartbeat and a name. Wanting his baby was, in those moments, less about recklessness than revelation. She was so overwhelmed by the bigness of what she felt for him, so overtaken by the beauty of the life she could already see waiting for them somewhere ahead, that her heart leapt past caution and reached for the most intimate future it knew how to name.
Nala, lovergirl to her marrow, did not only want Tyriq for the night, or the season, or the college romance of it all. She wanted him in the oldest, most terrifying way. She wanted his yesterdays and tomorrows. His children. His last name. His hand at the small of her back in rooms full of noise. His voice in a house full of life. His face bent over a crib in the middle of the night. She wanted the ordinary sacredness of belonging to each other until belonging turned into lineage. So when those pleas slipped from her, breathless and trembling and far too honest, they were not just the language of a girl overcome by feeling. They were prophecy from the softest part of her. They were the future pressing so hard at her spirit that it spilled out of her before sense could catch it and make it quieter.
Tyriq groaned, and Nala lifted her hand, wrapping it around his throat, applying the lightest amount of pressure, cutting off his airway momentarily, and their eyes met, desperation in hers, unadulterated, and soothed by the love in his gaze as she clapped down onto him.
“Cum in me, daddy, please, please, I been good, haven’t I?”
And that was it.
His vision whitened, and he felt his toes curl as the coil in his belly snapped. His words slurring as she ground onto him, his nails dug into her sides as she whined, the pain mixing with pleasure as his hot release painted her insides. Her body jerked a little at the sheer amount of it, but judging by the dopey and fucked out grin on her face, she didn’t seem to mind.
Nala giggled as she removed her hand from his throat, keeping him nestled between her legs as his cum dripped down from her pussy onto his balls, then onto her sheets.
“You alright, baby?” she whispered, and he groaned.
“Fuck, give me a minute, imma take care of you.”
“Take your time… we got all night.”
“Go ahead and clear your schedule for tomorrow too…you gon’ be a bit busy.”
He watched her, his own dopey grin matching her own as he pulled out of her, watching his cum leak down her thighs, gently patting her thigh, he moved her till her pussy was above his face. Looking up at her, he abandoned one thigh to take hold of her hand once more.
“I love you, baby,” Nala whispered.
“I love you, today, tomorrow and forever.”
Throughout the rest of the night, he seemed determined to worship her back into herself, to undo every small imbalance with patience and devotion until her pleasure sat at the center of everything between them. Again and again, Tyriq took his time with her, as if he were trying to make up for every moment that had not unfolded quite right, as if her satisfaction had become a point of honor with him, something sacred he meant to see through no matter how long it took. By the end of it, Nala had lost all sense of time. The hours had blurred into a haze of warmth, trembling laughter, breathless praise, and the kind of overwhelming tenderness that made pleasure feel almost holy.
And Tyriq, insatiable in that way that always made him seem half-devoted and half-damned, never once let up in his attention. He kept coaxing her higher and higher, as though he had decided her body was an altar and he would rather wear himself to ruin than stop worshipping at it. Whatever count she might once have kept was gone now, dissolved somewhere in the sheer excess of feeling, in the relentless sweetness of being so thoroughly adored.
By the time Nala finally collapsed beside him, she felt boneless with exhaustion, her thighs still trembling faintly from the aftershocks of too much sensation, her whole body softened into that delicate, overstimulated ache that arrives only after being loved on far past the point of speech. Tyriq turned to her at once, as if even after all that he still had more tenderness left to give, and kissed her slowly, deeply, with the lazy satisfaction of a man who could taste her joy still lingering between them and treated it like the most precious thing in the world. He kissed her the way some men handled treasure, with reverence, with hunger, with a kind of grateful awe.
Nala hummed softly into his mouth, too tired to do much more than melt, while he trailed that same sweetness into smaller gestures, pressing his lips to the implant in her right arm with an affection so oddly specific and so deeply him that it made her want to laugh and cry at once. It was in those tiny moments, perhaps more than anywhere else, that Tyriq became most dangerous, not merely in the force of his wanting, but in the depth of his care, in the way even her most ordinary parts became worthy of kissing simply because they belonged to her.
“’M sore,” she whined at last, her voice soft and frayed and full of that half-complaining, half-pleased exhaustion that told the real story all by itself.
Aftercare arrived in Tyriq the way all the deepest things seemed to arrive in him where Nala was concerned, not as performance, not as some half-learned ritual of what a man ought to do after pleasure had run its course, but as instinct, immediate and sure and tender enough to make the whole room feel rearranged by it. The second he heard the softness in her voice, that breathy little ’m sore, all the heat in him gentled into something else, something quieter and infinitely more dangerous, because a man who worshipped well was one thing, but a man who knew how to care for the aftermath of worship, who knew how to gather a woman back into herself after she had let him see so much, was something altogether rarer.
He kissed her forehead first, then the corner of her mouth, then the place just beneath her eye where exhaustion had turned her soft in a way he found almost unbearable.
“I know, baby,” he murmured, brushing her curls back from her face with one careful hand. “Stay right there for me.”
Nala made a sleepy little sound of protest the second he shifted away from her, reaching for him on pure instinct before her arm fell back onto the bed. Tyriq smiled despite himself, that small private smile men wore when they were pleased to be wanted even in the quiet aftermath, and he leaned back down just long enough to kiss her once more, slow and reassuring, before he slid from the bed.
The room around them looked like the physical evidence of loving hard. The sheets were twisted into disarray, pillows knocked askew, the warm heavy air carrying the scent of sweat and skin and the sweetness of a night that had gone on far beyond any original intention. Tyriq ran a hand over the back of his neck and winced a little at the state of it all, not with regret, never that, but with the brief startled realization of exactly how thoroughly they had wrecked the room without either of them noticing while they were busy ruining each other instead.
Then he saw the phone.
It was half-buried in the blankets near the edge of the mattress, the little red recording light still blinking like a nosy witness that had outlived its welcome. Tyriq went still for one second, then snatched it up with a low curse under his breath.
“Nah,” he muttered, more to himself than anything else, his thumb moving fast and sure over the screen. “Absolutely not.”
He stopped the recording immediately, the room falling a little more private the second the red light vanished, and set the phone facedown on the dresser with all the quiet finality of a man restoring order where order had been momentarily abandoned for better things. Whatever they had just shared belonged to them first, to memory and body and the private chambers of love, not to some forgotten camera angle blinking in the dark because neither of them had cared enough to notice it in time.
When he turned back, Nala was watching him through half-lidded eyes, too spent to be fully alert and still too aware of him not to follow the shape of his movements. Her curls were spread wild over the pillow, her mouth soft and swollen with exhaustion and lingering kisses, and Tyriq felt that old pull in his chest all over again, that same dangerous tenderness that made him want to ruin her and protect her in equal measure.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she mumbled faintly.
Tyriq raised a brow. “Like what?”
“Like you plotting.”
He laughed softly and headed toward the bathroom. “Baby, all I’m plotting now is getting you cleaned up before you knock out for real.”
He came back with a warm washcloth first, then another, then the big T-shirt of his she always ended up sleeping in anyway. He sat beside her again and slid an arm behind her shoulders to lift her just enough, his touch patient and practical and still somehow affectionate in every movement. There was no hurry in him now. No roughness. He cleaned her with the same care he might have used handling something fragile and deeply beloved, his face gone soft with concentration, every now and then pressing a kiss to her temple or her shoulder when she made one of those tired little noises that told him the tenderness was reaching her where words no longer could.
Nala, half-melted into the mattress, let him fuss over her with the boneless surrender of a woman too adored to argue properly. She only sighed and let her head roll toward him when his hand moved through her curls, only blinked slowly when he told her to lift her arm so he could tug the shirt over her head, only pouted a little when he finally pulled back to look at her and say, in that quiet no-nonsense tone of his:
“You need some water.”
“I need sleep,” she whispered.
“You need both.” He nudged her chin up with two fingers. “And you need to go pee.”
Nala frowned at him immediately, scandalized on instinct. “Tyriq.”
“Nala.”
The full use of her name made her narrow her eyes, but there was no heat in it, only sleepy resistance. “I don’t want to.”
“I know.” He kissed her forehead. “Still gotta go.”
She let out a long suffering breath that made him grin outright, and when he stood and held a hand out to her, she stared at it for one beat too long like the act of sitting up had become an unreasonable demand.
Tyriq shook his head, amused and impossibly fond. “Come on, baby. Don’t make me carry you in there.”
That, at least, got a flicker of life into her. “You wouldn’t.”
He gave her a look that said he absolutely would and both of them knew it.
So Nala took his hand.
He got her to the bathroom like that, one arm firm around her waist, his body a warm wall at her side while she shuffled in borrowed exhaustion and his shirt hanging soft around her thighs. He waited just outside the door while she peed, because some humiliations love made easier without ever fully removing them, and while she was in there he moved fast. By the time she came back out, blinking and sleepy and still leaning against the doorframe for balance, the room had begun returning to itself.
Tyriq had stripped the bed down with efficient hands, peeled off the ruined sheets, bundled them into a heap near the laundry basket, and was remaking the mattress with fresh linen from the closet. He moved with the quiet domestic authority of a man who had done this before, who had learned that love was not only the making of mess but the tending of it afterward. He shook out the fitted sheet with a snap, bent to smooth it into place, changed the pillowcases, straightened the comforter, and every so often glanced over his shoulder to make sure Nala was still upright and not halfway asleep on her feet.
At one point he looked down at the stripped bedding piled at his feet and let out a low wince, scrubbing a hand over his jaw as if the sheer visual evidence of what they had been doing had finally caught up with him.
“Damn,” he murmured.
Nala, still slumped in the doorway, managed the faintest tired smile. “That bad?”
Tyriq looked at her, then at the sheets, then back at her again, and the expression that crossed his face was so deeply, sleepily pleased with both himself and her that it made her laugh despite the soreness.
“I’m not answering that,” he said, though his mouth had already betrayed him.
He crossed back to her then with a glass in one hand and a bottle in the other. Not just water. Something with electrolytes, because of course he had thought ahead enough to care about replenishment as much as thirst. He guided her back to the bed, helped her settle against the pillows, then pressed the glass into her hands and watched until she took the first few real swallows.
“All of it,” he said.
Nala looked up at him over the rim. “You are bossy.”
“You are dehydrated.”
“I’m dramatic, not dehydrated.”
Tyriq folded his arms and stared until she drank again.
That made her roll her eyes, but she kept sipping anyway, because his fussing had long since become one of the shapes love took between them. It was never really about the water or the bathroom or the sheets alone. It was the fact of him, the fact that he noticed, that he remembered, that he treated her body not like a site of pleasure only but like something deserving care after it had given and given and given.
When she was done, he took the glass, set it aside, and climbed back into the bed beside her at last. The fresh sheets were cool and clean against their skin, the room restored to order, the phone dead and silent on the dresser, the old evidence of heat now folded away into laundry and memory. Tyriq pulled her carefully into him, one arm under her shoulders, the other across her waist, tucking her against his chest with the same unembarrassed certainty that had marked him from the beginning.
Nala sighed, all the fight gone out of her now.
“There,” he murmured into her hair. “Better?”
She nodded against him after a moment. “Much.”
Tyriq kissed the crown of her head and held her a little closer, his palm moving slow and absent over her side, more grounding than anything else. The room had gone quiet around them again, no longer charged, no longer wild, just dim and warm and full of the deep domestic intimacy that follows being thoroughly loved.
And because he was Tyriq, because his tenderness always arrived threaded with the faintest note of self-satisfaction, he let one beat pass before murmuring into her curls, “You lucky you got me.”
Nala, already halfway asleep against his chest, smiled without opening her eyes.
“Very,” she whispered.
That answer pleased him more than he would ever say out loud. He kissed her once more, soft and final at her temple, then settled his cheek against the top of her head and let the room and the night and the last of the adrenaline fall away around them, his girl clean and warm in his arms, the bed remade, the water finished, the door locked, the phone silenced, and every wild beautiful trace of the evening put gently to bed.
“Keep me warm?” Tyriq hummed against her as he kissed her neck.
Nala’s brows furrowed in confusion, “I am.”
“‘M still cold mama.”
Realisation dawned on Nala as she rolled her eyes, “You so freaky.”
“You got the AC on in here or some shit? ‘S freezing baby, you don’t want me to shiver all night do you?” he smiled against her as she adjusted her body, and lifted her thigh, finding his way inside of her oncemore with a content hum as she squeezed around him, welcoming him back in eagerly.
“You warm?”
“Mhm, more than just warm baby.”
Tyriq laughed softly against her hair, the sound low and warm and far too pleased with itself for a man who had already spent the better part of the night proving he had absolutely no sense of mercy where she was concerned.
“Don’t start nothin’ ‘m tired Tyriq.”
“Baby,” he murmured, tightening his arm around her just enough to make the point that he had heard her and intended, for once, to behave. “I ain’t starting nothing.”
Nala made a sleepy little sound that clearly communicated she did not believe him at all.
Tyriq smiled into the top of her head and pressed a slow kiss there, then another to her temple, all softness now, all aftercare and affection and that deep contentment men got when the woman they loved was warm and worn out and tucked safely against them.
“I’m serious,” he said, voice dropping into that gentle, half-teasing register that always made everything sound a little sweeter than it had any right to. “You done already gave me enough trouble for one night.”
Nala huffed, eyes still closed, too exhausted to do more than shift a little closer into his chest. “Mm-hm.”
He let her have the last word, or at least the illusion of it. His hand moved lazily over her side beneath the shirt, not suggestive now, only soothing, the slow absent touch of a man settling his girl down for sleep.
“Aight,” he whispered after a moment. “Go to bed then. I got you.”
And because that was exactly what she needed to hear, Nala’s body finally gave up the last of its tension and melted fully into him, while Tyriq held her there in the clean sheets and the quiet room, smiling to himself in the dark like a man who had every intention of acting right… at least until morning.
tags : @mamasturn @sheinaskirt @authentic-girl03 @k0niiii-blog @trustmymood @glizzymcguirex @ms-mosley-ifunastyyy @blackfemreaderr @blckblossom @trustmymood @unicoo @yourleogf @uniqueoutlierblog @og-goddesstrill @determinednot2fall @melaninhawtie @xoadaraox @thatssokarii @kirayuki22 @the1miscief @plan3tch1ld @daliscrim @szatears @that-one-anxious-mango @sonder-slut @saintaquarius @bestleowoman2exist (lmk if you wanted to be added or removed )
Content warnings: MDNI 18+‼️, SMUT, kinda public sex, tit sucking, PIV, unprotected sex( wrap it up yall cause they don’t), drunken sex
W/C: 900+
A/N: Tyriq looked too good at the met yall I was inspired, I wrote this before bed so pls don’t mind any errors 🫶🏾
It was the peak of the night, the met gala after party packed, filled to the brim with celebrities new and old.
Waiters passing every second handing out flutes of the champagne, you weren’t sure what glass you were on but you knew you had been hot for the last hour and it wasn’t your dress. Tyriq had drifted not too long ago, you made it your mission to find him.
He wasn’t far away, mingling with friends when you tugged on his jacket sleeve signaling to him your need as discreetly as possible.
It didn’t take much explaining from him, and not long after he all but ran from the group as you tugged him through the sea of gowns and body glitter.
It didn’t take long for you to find any empty bathroom to pull him into locking the door behind you and pouncing on him.
Drunken kisses exchanged as you two did the best to rid the other of clothes but struggling with the amount of zippers and buttons on your dress.
He gave up, letting out a sigh as he lifted you onto the bathroom counter. Lips trailing messily from yours, down your neck and littering bites all over your exposed chest.
You let out a mix of a whine and moan, you loved how he felt but if he wasn’t inside of you soon you’d exploded.
Your hands hurriedly found his pants zipper as you made quick of freeing his length from its prison.
He had long abandoned the task of getting you completely naked and settled on lifting your dress and sliding your panties as far right as they’d go.
You wrapped your legs around his waist, using your heel to beckon him closer as you held his base in hand, guiding his dick to your slick entrance.
Groans left the both of you as he entered, his hands finding your plush thighs and he gripped them for leverage as he quickened his pace.
“F-uck.” The broken curse leaving his mouth in a low almost whine as your tightness sucked him in, his jaw slack as he soaked in your warmth.
“Oh- like that, please, keep fucking me like that” you murmured breathily.
He pulled you to the edge of the counter, achieving a new angle that could have sent you off the edge immediately. Your hands braced the counter behind you keeping you.
His hands left your thighs as they trailed up your waist, his movement quick and desperate as he yanked your top down freeing your heavy breasts from it.
“Sexy ass titites.” He whispered, as his hand moved almost instinctively to your nipple pinching it as he watched you through low eyes.
You bit your lip to try and suppress the loud moans escaping you, but your attempt was in vain as he tilted his head bringing your boob to his mouth.
He started with a kitten lick knowing how sensitive you were. Before adding the thumb of his unoccupied hand onto your thumping clit, rubbing in slow circles to bring your impending climax.
The way tyriq sucked at you as if it was for his pleasure almost made your eyes roll into your head. You could feel his throbbing cock, at his approaching release as he fucked into you fiercely.
It wasn’t long before a knock on the door and a jingle of the door knob slowed him in his track. His mouth lifting from your chest with a pop as he glanced at the door.
“Don’t stop, baby im so fucking close please.” You pleaded. Eyes locking in on his as you push him back into you with the back of your heel, urging him to continue.
Against his better judgment he continued, usually your first thought would be to make sure no one saw but in your drunken, fucked out state that was the last thing in your mind.
His thumb quickened on your clit as he made it his mission to get you off.
“That’s it, like that baby, like that.” You prompted him to continue, the noise of the person behind the door becoming drowned out under the sound of your moans. You could care less who heared.
“Ill cum if you keep fucking me like that” you moaned.
He moaned in response to your praises, they did nothing to quiet him down, only pushing him faster, moans and grunts becoming louder.
“S-shit im gonna cum” he warned. One hand in between your thighs, the other gripping a thigh as he thrusted into you.
“I wanna feel it, in me please.” You moaned as your climax approached with his.
You both shuddered as your orgasms over took. His hips jerking as he rocked in and out you slow. Your pussy clenching around his length milking his seed out as he came.
He leaned over as his forehead resting on yours. You breaths mixing in the after of what just happened. You went to seal your lips to his when the doors knob shook again. The inline person behind the door angry they could get inside to pee. You went sure how long you had been in there, but out of every bathroom in this place they had to choose this.
“We gotta move mama.” Tyriq mumbled as he slowly pulled out of you causing a whine from how sensitive you still were.
He wet a towel cleaning you up, before helping you off the counter and adjusting your dress.
The person outside was so persistent you knew there was no way you and tyriq could leave the bathroom without being seen.
You both did a once over before exiting the bathroom.
You mumbled a small and quick apology as you walked past the person back into the party. As if nothing happened you and tyriq said your few goodbyes before heading to your hotel.
You didn’t recognize the person outside the bathroom, but you hoped they could mind their business well enough and that news wouldn’t be on the shaderoom come morning.
ೃI'D RATHER BE WITH YOUᝰ
tyriq withers x oc! ( ivy jermaine )
ivy's face claim is teyana taylor ( i need her so bad omg)
Ivy Jermaine has spent years surviving fame’s glittering cruelty, learning how to be desired, watched, and misunderstood without letting the world see her bleed. At thirty-five, she knows better than to be reckless with beautiful men — especially younger ones.
Then she meets Tyriq Withers, a twenty-seven-year-old actor with dangerous charm, quiet patience, and impossible confidence. He is too young for her rules, too direct for her defenses, and far too certain that what he wants is her.
What starts as a charged pre-Met party encounter becomes intimate, risky, and impossible to ignore — forcing Ivy to wonder if the man she thinks is too young for her might be grown enough to ruin every excuse she has left.
Ivy Jermaine had been in the game long enough to know that fame was not a mountain one simply climbed, but an island one washed ashore on, half-drowned and glittering, praying the gods were in a merciful mood when the tide pulled back. She knew the cruel geography of it well, knew the sharp cliffs and golden valleys, the dizzying heights where applause came down warm as sunlight on bare skin, and the low, cavernous depths where the water went black around her ankles and every mistake became something with teeth. She had learned, over the years, that adoration was a fickle sea, beautiful from a distance and brutal once it decided to drag you under. One moment, the world crowned you Aphrodite rising from the foam, all beauty and divine softness, and the next, it turned you into Medusa, monstrous for daring to be seen from the wrong angle.
She could still remember the nights when the internet had torn her apart for things so small they should have dissolved beneath daylight: a wrong like, an ignored credit, a comment taken out of context, some mundane, minute misstep inflated until it loomed over her like Poseidon’s wrath over a trembling shore. She remembered lying curled in bed with her phone clenched in her hand, the blue light washing over her face like moonlight over wreckage, her stomach turning as strangers picked pieces of her apart with the casual violence of gulls descending on something already dead. They called it accountability when they were bored, criticism when they were cruel, discourse when they wanted to pretend there was no blood in the water. Everyone went through it at least once on the road to fame, or at least that was what people told themselves so they could survive it. A rite of passage. A storm before the crown. A necessary sacrifice on the altar. Ivy had never found much comfort in that.
Now, as she sat alone at the bar of the pre-Met party, she felt every mile of the life she had chosen settling into her bones. Her neck ached from the flight, from the red-eye she had taken after filming wrapped, from the kind of exhaustion that seemed to live not just in the body, but beneath it, down in the marrow where no amount of concealer or caffeine could reach. She was running on nothing but an espresso martini, an obscene amount of Red Bull, and the stubborn, practiced grace of a woman who had learned to arrive beautifully even when she felt like ruin.
The room around her glittered like Olympus after dark, all marble skin, flashbulbs, silk, diamonds, and laughter sharp enough to cut glass. Everyone looked sculpted and untouchable, gods and demigods draped in couture, pretending not to watch one another while watching everything. Ivy sat among them in a fitted dress that clung to her body like wet sand after a tide, doing little to hide the curve of her hips, the soft abundance of her thighs, the grown-woman fullness of her figure that cameras loved almost as much as they punished. She looked beautiful, because beauty had become part of the job. But beneath the gold light and the gloss on her lips, Ivy felt more like land after a storm than a goddess before worship — salt-worn, weathered, still standing, but tired of proving she had not been swallowed whole.
“You look over it tonight.”
The voice came from beside her, low and amused, a little too certain of itself for a stranger, and Ivy turned her head slowly, not because she was startled, but because men like that were best observed the way sailors watched a change in the wind; carefully, without panic, without giving the sea the satisfaction of knowing you had felt it shift.
He stood at the bar like he had been carved there by some vain god with too much time and a dangerous fondness for symmetry, all height and hard lines, a rough six-five with broad shoulders wrapped in black fabric that did very little to disguise the body beneath it. His skin was warm and light-brown beneath the gold spill of the chandelier, his blue eyes unnervingly bright, almost mythic in the low light, the kind of blue that belonged less to a man and more to deep water glimpsed from the edge of a cliff. Diamond studs sat in both ears, catching the light like small offerings stolen from Olympus, and his gaze rested on Ivy with the unmistakable patience of someone who had crossed the room with intention.
He was beautiful. That was the first thing Ivy noted, because she was honest enough with herself to admit when the gods had done good work. Not pretty, not merely handsome, not one of those polished, over-managed men Hollywood liked to arrange beneath soft lighting and call irresistible, but beautiful in a way that felt older than manners, rougher than charm, like sin had found flesh and decided to walk upright. He looked like trouble dressed well, like a storm rolling in over calm water, like the kind of man mothers warned their daughters about only to remember, too late, that daughters had always been drawn to thunder.
Ivy’s gaze moved over him with measured intrigue, taking in the confidence in his posture, the lazy set of his mouth, the quiet arrogance of a man who knew exactly what women saw when they looked at him and had long ago stopped pretending to be humble about it. He was an Adonis in his own right, yes, but not the soft, garden-bred kind meant to be mourned by Aphrodite beneath blooming anemones; no, this one looked like he had been raised by war drums and saltwater, like Ares had pressed a hand to the back of his neck and taught him how to walk into a room without asking permission from anyone inside it.
And he was after something. Ivy could feel that much in the air between them, the same way dry earth could feel rain before the sky broke open. She did not mind. If anything, she found herself entertained. Her lips curved faintly as she tipped her chin up to meet his eyes, refusing to be swallowed by his height, refusing to let him mistake her stillness for submission. At thirty-five, Ivy Jermaine had seen enough beautiful men to know that beauty, by itself, was rarely worth the trouble it brought to your door. Pretty faces were easy. Strong bodies were everywhere. Confidence, God help them all, had become common currency among men who mistook attention for substance.
But this one had presence. That was the problem. He stood beside her like discord come to sow itself in her field, like a black-sailed ship appearing on a horizon that had been peaceful five minutes ago, and Ivy, exhausted as she was, neck aching, bloodstream still humming with caffeine and liquor and stubborn survival, could not deny the small flicker of interest that stirred somewhere low and inconvenient in her. She turned back toward her drink, letting one manicured finger trace the rim of her glass before she answered him.
“Do I?” she asked, her voice smooth enough to be mistaken for indifference, though the corner of her mouth betrayed her.
The man’s eyes dipped briefly to that smile, then returned to hers.
“A little,” he said. “Like you’re deciding whether the room is worth staying in.”
Ivy gave a soft breath of laughter, not quite warm, not quite dismissive.
“And you came over to convince me it is?”
His mouth curved then, slow and dangerous, as if he had been waiting for her to open the door just enough for him to set one foot inside.
“Nah,” he said, leaning his forearm against the bar, close enough that Ivy could smell the clean, expensive spice of him beneath the smoke and perfume in the room. “I came over because everybody else keeps looking at you like they scared to bother you.”
Ivy arched a brow.
“And you’re not scared?”
He looked at her then, really looked at her, with a steadiness that made the noise of the party seem to pull back like tidewater from the shore.
“No, ma’am.”
The answer should have irritated her. The ma’am certainly should have. Instead, Ivy felt something in her chest give one slow, reluctant turn, like the first crack of land after a long drought. The answer should have irritated her. The ma’am certainly should have. Instead, Ivy felt something low in her belly give a slow, traitorous turn, like the first tremor of earth before the fault line split open, like the tide changing direction beneath a moon that had no business pulling on water so deliberately.
She looked at him over the rim of her glass, taking her time with it, because men who looked like him were used to being consumed quickly, greedily, without ceremony, and Ivy had never believed in letting any man know too early that he had managed to unsettle the weather inside her. She sipped slowly, let the liquor burn soft and bitter across her tongue, then set the glass down with the quiet precision of a woman who had built whole temples out of restraint.
“You always walk up to women you don’t know and call them ma’am?”
His smile deepened, not sheepish, not apologetic, only amused in that lazy, Southern-adjacent way that made arrogance look like a birthright instead of a flaw.
“Only when they look like they might cuss me out if I call them baby too soon.”
Ivy’s brows lifted, and despite herself, despite the exhaustion sitting heavy on her shoulders, despite the dull ache at the base of her skull and the unkind hour pressed behind her eyes, she laughed. It was not loud. Ivy Jermaine did not give strangers that much of herself for free. But it was real enough to change her face, real enough to soften the careful line of her mouth, real enough for Tyriq’s gaze to catch on it and hold there like a man who had just watched the sun break through storm clouds over open water.
“That’s bold,” she said.
“That’s honest.”
“Those are not the same thing.”
“They are when I say them.”
Ivy stared at him then, really stared, because there it was, that thing she had felt before he even opened his mouth, that unbothered, insolent confidence sitting easy on his shoulders. Not loud. Not desperate. Not the brittle kind of cockiness men wore when they needed everyone in the room to know they had once been overlooked. Tyriq Withers did not seem to be performing masculinity so much as inhabiting it, relaxed inside it, settled into himself the way land settled after centuries of being carved by water and wind. He was too young to look that sure of himself. That was the first warning. The second was that she liked it.
Ivy turned in her seat just enough to face him, crossing one leg over the other beneath the bar, watching his eyes flick down for half a breath before returning to her face. He did not pretend he had not looked. That annoyed her too, or it should have, because there was nothing boyish about the way he appreciated her, nothing nervous or fumbling or overeager. He looked at her the way a man looked at something he wanted to learn by touch eventually, yes, but not before he learned what made it sacred.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
His mouth curved.
“You don’t know?”
“I asked.”
Something like approval moved through his expression, quick and subtle, like lightning far off over the sea.
“Tyriq.”
She tilted her head slightly.
“Withers?”
He looked almost pleased by the way she said it, his name wrapped in her voice like silk pulled slowly through a fist.
“That sound familiar?”
“I know who you are.”
“Figured.”
“That was not a compliment.”
“I ain’t take it as one.”
Ivy hummed, amused despite herself, and picked up her drink again, letting him stand there with his height, his diamonds, his blue eyes, and all that deliberate stillness. The party moved around them in glittering waves, bodies drifting past in couture and perfume, laughter rising and falling like gulls over a restless shore, but somehow the bar had narrowed into the small charged stretch of space between Ivy’s knee and Tyriq’s thigh, between her glass and his hand, between the guarded woman she had trained herself to be and the younger man looking at her like he already knew there was heat beneath all that marble.
“How old are you, Tyriq Withers?”
There it was. She let the question fall between them without dressing it up, without softening it, without pretending it was casual. It was not casual. Not with the way she looked at him when she asked, not with the faint challenge tucked beneath her tone like a blade beneath satin. She wanted to see him flinch. Wanted to watch his confidence stutter. Wanted to remind him, before he got too comfortable in her air, that she was not some girl dazzled by the fact that a beautiful actor had wandered over and decided to make her his entertainment for the evening.
Tyriq did not flinch. He leaned against the bar instead, one forearm resting on the polished surface, his body angled toward hers like he had all the time in the world and no intention of surrendering a single inch of ground. His gaze moved over her face slowly, not disrespectful, not invasive, but attentive in a way that felt almost worse, because Ivy was suddenly, irritatingly aware of her own breathing.
“Twenty-seven.”
Ivy’s lips parted around a soft breath that was not quite a laugh.
“Twenty-seven.”
“You repeating it ’cause you heard me, or ’cause you judging me?”
“I’m processing.”
“You need help?”
Her eyes narrowed.
He smiled.
God, that smile was going to be a problem. It was not pretty in a harmless way. It was too knowing for that, too edged, too full of trouble. It curved across his face like a dark sail catching wind, like Hades deciding to be charming before stealing spring straight out of the meadow. Ivy looked at him and understood, with an almost academic clarity, that he was used to women forgiving him things before he had even done them. She refused to be one of them.
“You’re young,” she said.
Tyriq nodded once, calm as the sea before it ruined a coastline.
“And you fine.”
Ivy blinked. The sheer audacity of it should have offended her into silence. Instead, the laugh that escaped her came warmer this time, unwilling and low, slipping out of her before she could stop it. She shook her head, glancing down at her glass like it might offer her some legal counsel, some divine protection, something to explain why this man had taken a perfectly reasonable boundary and stepped over it with the ease of someone crossing wet sand barefoot.
“You did not just answer my concern with a compliment.”
“It was a statement.”
“It was deflection.”
“Nah,” he said, and his voice dipped, the amusement still there, but threaded now with something heavier, something that settled against her skin like humidity before rain. “Deflection would be me acting like I don’t know what you’re saying.”
Ivy’s gaze lifted back to his.
Tyriq held it.
“I know what you’re saying,” he continued. “You’re thirty-five. I’m twenty-seven. That’s eight years. You think that’s supposed to scare me off, or make me nervous, or make me start explaining why I’m grown enough to stand here.”
The words landed too cleanly. Too directly. Ivy hated direct men when they were wrong and distrusted them when they were right.
“And are you?” she asked, softer now, though there was still steel beneath it. “Grown enough?”
Tyriq’s eyes darkened, not in color, because that blue stayed bright and impossible beneath the gold light, but in intent. Something in him seemed to step closer before his body did, some invisible part of him crossing the space between them first, laying claim not to her, but to the moment. The air grew thick around Ivy’s throat.
“I’m not asking you to raise me, Ivy.”
Her name in his mouth was a problem. Not because he said it beautifully, though he did. Not because he dragged the syllables out like he was tasting them, though he did that too. It was the way he said it like he had earned the right to use it plainly, without ornament, without fear, without the little reverence other men sometimes put on it when they wanted her to mistake performance for respect.
“I’m not asking you to teach me how to be a man,” he said. “I’m not asking you to lower nothing, soften nothing, pretend nothing. You asked how old I am, and I told you. But if eight years is the only thing standing between me and taking you seriously, then that ain’t really about me being young.”
Ivy went still. Tyriq’s smile faded just enough for her to feel the loss of it.
“That’s about you being scared.”
There it was. The hook beneath the honey. For a moment, Ivy could only look at him, the noise of the party blurring at the edges until it became surf, until the whole glittering room felt less like Olympus and more like some old shore where gods came down from their thrones to meddle in mortal weather. She felt herself exposed in a way that had nothing to do with the dress fitted over her hips or the diamonds at her ears or the gloss on her mouth. This was not the crude exposure of being wanted. Ivy knew how to handle being wanted. Want was common. Want walked up to bars every night wearing cologne and borrowed confidence. This was worse. Tyriq had seen the locked gate and commented on the fence.
“You don’t know me well enough to say that.”
“You right.”
His answer came too easily.
Ivy frowned.
“I am?”
“Yeah,” he said, and that swagger slid back over him, warm and aggravating, a velvet cloak over a blade. “But I know women don’t ask a man his age like that unless they already thought about what it would mean if they liked him.”
Ivy’s mouth closed. His eyes dropped to it. Only for a second. Only long enough for her to feel it. Then he looked back up, and the restraint in that return did more damage than any blatant stare could have done. There was eroticism in the discipline of him, in the way he did not crowd her though she could tell he wanted to, in the way he let the silence touch her first. It was not the rushed hunger of a younger man trying to prove he could devour. It was the patience of a tide that understood shorelines always gave way eventually, not because they were weak, but because water knew how to wait.
Ivy swallowed, furious at the fact that he noticed.
“Careful,” she said.
Tyriq’s head tilted slightly.
“With what?”
“With assuming I like you.”
That smile returned, slow as dawn over dark water.
“I ain’t assuming.”
“No?”
“Nah.” His gaze moved over her face again, lingering not on the obvious places, not on the cleavage her dress allowed or the curve of her crossed legs, but on the tension near her eyes, the exhaustion at her temples, the small pulse betraying itself at the side of her throat. “I’m observing.”
Ivy breathed out a quiet laugh.
“You are very pleased with yourself.”
“I got reason to be.”
“And humble.”
“When necessary.”
“And is it ever necessary?”
“Depends who I’m standing in front of.”
That made her pause, because he did not say it flirtatiously enough for her to dismiss. There was a shade of reverence beneath it, not worship exactly, not the clumsy pedestal men loved to put women on so they could complain later when they turned out human, but recognition. He saw her beauty, yes, but he also seemed aware that beauty was only the shoreline. Something in his gaze kept looking inland, past the white sand and the pretty palms, toward the places Ivy had spent years fortifying. She hated that. She wanted him to be simpler. Beautiful men were easier when they were simple.
“You should be talking to women your own age,” Ivy said, though even she heard that the sentence had lost some of its force.
Tyriq gave her a look so unimpressed it nearly made her laugh again.
“I do.”
“Then go find one.”
“I don’t want one.”
The answer came without hesitation, landing between them with all the weight of a door closing behind someone who had no plans to leave soon. Ivy stared at him. He stared back. No grin now. No teasing. Just that impossible steadiness.
“You don’t even know me,” she said, but it came softer than before, not because she meant for it to, but because her voice seemed to understand the temperature of the moment before she did.
“I know enough to want to.”
“You’re very sure of yourself for a man standing at a bar with a stranger.”
“I’m sure of what I feel when I’m near people.”
“And what do you feel near me?”
Tyriq did not answer immediately. That was what made it dangerous. He took his time, and the pause unfurled between them like a sail, catching every unsaid thing, every warning Ivy had given herself, every rule she had written in the private law book of her life. No athletes. No younger men. No men whose names could pull cameras out of bushes. No men who looked like temptation and spoke like they had already survived the consequences. Then Tyriq leaned in—not enough to touch her, not enough to make a spectacle, just enough for his voice to lower into something meant only for her.
“Like you tired of being looked at and not seen.”
Ivy’s breath caught so quietly it almost did not happen. Almost. But Tyriq saw it. Of course he did. His gaze softened then, and somehow that was more erotic than the heat, more devastating than the swagger, because it turned the space between them from flirtation into something dangerously close to intimacy. The party continued around them, diamonds flashing like constellations over a black sea, laughter breaking against the walls, cameras waiting beyond doors like hungry gods demanding sacrifice, but Ivy felt the world pull back until there was only this man and the unbearable accuracy of his attention.
“You don’t get to say things like that to me,” she said.
Tyriq’s voice stayed low.
“Why not?”
“Because you don’t know what they cost.”
His jaw shifted slightly, and for the first time since he came over, something in him looked less amused and more serious, less like a man playing with fire and more like one who understood that the flame had a history before his hand ever reached for it.
“Then tell me.”
The simplicity of it almost undid her. Not fix it. Not let me handle it. Not I’m different, not trust me, not all those pretty useless things men said when they wanted access to a woman’s wounds without respecting the scar tissue. Just tell me. Ivy looked away first, because she had to. Her gaze found the bottles behind the bar, amber and green and clear glass lined up like little gods of forgetfulness, each promising a different kind of mercy. She should have dismissed him then. She should have smiled, made some sharp comment, left him standing there with his blue eyes and his audacity and his youth. She was good at exits. Elegant ones. Cruel ones. Necessary ones.
But Tyriq was still beside her. Warm. Present. Not pushing. And somehow that patience was the worst seduction of all.
“You don’t want that,” she said.
He was quiet for a moment.
Then, “I don’t know who taught you to keep telling people what they want before they even get a chance to decide, but that ain’t got nothing to do with me.”
Ivy turned back to him slowly. The look she gave him could have turned a weaker man to stone. Tyriq only smiled, faint and devastating.
“There she go,” he murmured.
Her eyes narrowed. “There who goes?”
“The woman everybody scared to bother.”
“I thought you weren’t scared.”
“I’m not.”
“You should be.”
“Maybe.”
He stepped a fraction closer then, still not touching, but close enough that Ivy could feel the heat of him through the charged air, close enough that his cologne threaded through her breathing, clean spice and smoke and something like cedar after rain. Her body noticed him with an honesty her mind found humiliating. The breadth of him. The height. The calm. The danger. The way he made no apology for wanting to be there, in her orbit, under her scrutiny, taking her age and her warnings and her fear and refusing to bow before any of them like they were gods worth worshipping.
“But I’m still here,” he said.
Ivy’s throat worked. Tyriq’s eyes flicked to it again, and this time he did not pretend she missed it.
“You flirt like you’re trying to get slapped,” she said.
His smile turned wicked at the edges.
“Nah. I flirt like I’m trying to get your number.”
“That’s worse.”
“Depends what you do with it.”
Ivy laughed under her breath, shaking her head, and Tyriq watched her like the sound had pleased him more than he wanted to admit. There was something almost boyish in that pleasure, but not immature, not green. Just unguarded for half a second. A flash of warmth beneath all the swagger. A glimpse of the man behind the actor, behind the blue eyes and diamonds and six-foot-five worth of trouble leaning too comfortably into her evening. That was the part Ivy knew would be dangerous. Not his beauty. Not his age. Not even the way he wanted her. It was the way he looked genuinely interested in what lived past the want.
“I’m not giving you my number,” she said.
Tyriq nodded as if she had said something reasonable.
“Okay.”
Ivy blinked.
“Okay?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s it?”
“For now.”
Her lips twitched. “For now?”
“I ain’t begging at a bar, Ivy. You grown. You said no. I heard you.”
The heat of that should not have moved through her the way it did. Respect, Ivy had learned, could be erotic when it came from a man who had enough power to push and enough discipline not to. It landed in her chest first, then lower, unfurling through her like warmth over cold land. He was not retreating, not really, but he was letting the gate remain closed without rattling it. Letting her hold the key. Letting her feel the rare pleasure of being pursued without being cornered. She studied him, suspicious of how much she liked that.
“And if I keep saying no?”
Tyriq picked up the drink the bartender had set down for him, finally breaking eye contact long enough to take a slow sip. When he looked back at her, his mouth was wet from it, and Ivy, to her own disgust, noticed.
“Then I’ll believe you.”
The answer was too good. Far too good. Ivy leaned back slightly, needing space from him and getting none, because the problem was not his proximity anymore. The problem was that Tyriq Withers had walked over with the face of a sin and the confidence of a king, only to reveal something worse beneath it: restraint, emotional intelligence, and the kind of directness that made a woman feel foolish for trying to hide behind semantics.
“You are irritating,” she said.
“I been told I grow on people.”
“Like mold?”
“Like ivy.”
She stared at him.
He grinned.
And that, unfortunately, made her laugh again. Really laugh this time, her head tipping down for half a second as the sound left her, soft and warm and unwilling. Tyriq looked at her like he had been given something. Not won it. Not taken it. Given. That distinction mattered. Ivy wished it did not.
“You think you’re cute,” she said.
“I know you do.”
“Tyriq.”
The warning in his name was immediate, instinctive, and he reacted to it like it had touched him somewhere low, his eyes sharpening, his posture shifting almost imperceptibly. Ivy noticed because she was watching him too closely now, noticed the way his fingers tightened once around his glass, noticed the breath he took before his smile returned.
“Say it like that again and I might start thinking you like me.”
“I already told you not to assume.”
“And I told you I observe.”
The party roared briefly behind them as someone famous entered, cameras flashing from the far side of the room like lightning over a black horizon, but neither of them turned to look. Ivy should have. It was the kind of distraction she needed, the kind of opening she could use to slip away from whatever this was before it became a thing with shape and gravity. Instead, she stayed. Tyriq’s gaze dropped once more, not to her body this time, but to her left hand resting on the bar. No ring. Ivy saw him notice.
“Don’t,” she said.
His eyes lifted, innocent in a way that was entirely false. “Don’t what?”
“Ask.”
“I wasn’t.”
“You were thinking it.”
“I think a lot of things.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“Right now I’m thinking you need food.”
Ivy blinked again, thrown by the shift.
“What?”
“You running on caffeine and liquor.”
Her brows pulled together. “How would you know that?”
“You got that little tremor in your hand when you picked up your glass, and you look like if somebody breathe wrong near you, you might either cry or commit a felony.”
Ivy stared at him.
Tyriq shrugged.
“Could be both. I’m not judging.”
She should not have found that funny. She absolutely found that funny.
“You always this observant?”
“When I’m interested.”
The words returned the heat to the moment so quickly Ivy almost resented him for it. He did not even have to lower his voice that much. He simply let the truth sit there, heavy and warm, and Ivy felt it move over her like summer rain over dry soil.
“I’m not your business, Tyriq.”
“Not yet.”
Her eyes narrowed, but there was no stopping the smile now.
“You hear yourself?”
“Clearly.”
“And this works on women?”
He leaned in just slightly, his voice dropping back into that private register that made the party feel very far away.
“I don’t care what works on women.”
Ivy’s pulse betrayed her again. Tyriq saw it again. His gaze held hers, steady and darkening at the edges.
“I’m talking to you.”
For a moment, Ivy did not answer, and it annoyed her, the way silence had begun to gather around him like loyal subjects around a young king, the way the noise of the party seemed to thin whenever he lowered his voice, as if even the room wanted to lean in and hear what this beautiful, insolent man had to say. He had that thing certain men were born with and other men spent entire lifetimes trying to purchase: presence without desperation, confidence without performance, a swagger that did not need volume because it had weight.
He was not the most famous man in the room. Not yet. That was the dangerous part. There were men around them with Oscar nominations, box-office franchises, magazine covers, legacy last names, men whose faces had been projected thirty feet tall over cities Ivy could name by skyline alone, but Tyriq Withers carried himself as if fame had simply not caught up to him yet. As if the world was late, not him. As if whatever door he stood before would eventually open, not because he begged at the threshold, but because the hinges would get tired of pretending they did not know who he was. Ivy could feel that certainty on him. It moved with him like heat off asphalt after rain.
“You’re talking to me,” she repeated, because the words needed somewhere to go that was not directly beneath her skin.
Tyriq nodded once, easy, unhurried, the corner of his mouth tilting as he watched her try to turn plain confession into something negotiable.
“That’s what I said.”
“You say everything like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you already know how it ends.”
His smile deepened then, slow and devastating, the kind of smile that did not ask a woman to trust him so much as dare her to pretend she was unmoved.
“I don’t know how it ends,” he said, his voice still low enough to belong only to her, “but I know where I want to start.”
Ivy’s breath went shallow. She hated him a little for that. Not seriously, not with the clean heat of anger, but with the irritated fascination of a woman watching a storm gather over land she had spent years cultivating by hand. He was too direct, too steady, too young to speak with that kind of patience, and too beautiful to make patience feel safe. She could dismiss a man who pawed at attention. She could ignore a man who mistook desire for permission. But Tyriq stood there like he understood both want and restraint, like he could hold hunger in his mouth without letting it spill, and that made the room feel suddenly warm enough to be indecent.
“You’re very bold for somebody who just started getting invited to rooms like this,” Ivy said, turning the blade where she knew it might catch.
Tyriq laughed under his breath, not wounded, not embarrassed, not even defensive. If anything, he looked pleased that she had noticed.
“Damn,” he murmured. “You did some homework on me?”
“I exist in this industry, Tyriq. I know faces.”
“You know mine?”
“I know you were in that limited series on HBO.”
“Two episodes.”
“You died in the second one.”
“Memorably.”
Ivy’s mouth twitched despite herself, and Tyriq caught it like a man catching sunlight in his palm, his gaze lowering briefly to her lips before returning to her eyes with enough discipline to make the glance feel more intimate than touch.
“You had six minutes of screen time,” she said.
“And you remember all six.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
“I don’t have to. You keep helping.”
She stared at him, caught between irritation and amusement, and the worst part was that he did not look like he needed her laughter to survive, only like he enjoyed earning it. There was a difference, and Ivy had lived long enough to appreciate the distinction. Men who needed to be liked became cruel when denied. Men who enjoyed a challenge could be entertained by a no without trying to punish you for it. Tyriq, unfortunately, looked entertained.
“You’re new,” Ivy said, gentler this time, though she did not mean to soften it. “You don’t know what these rooms do to people yet.”
At that, something shifted behind his eyes, something subtle and dark, a cloud passing over blue water. Not insecurity. Not fear. Awareness.
“I know enough.”
“No, you don’t.”
His head tilted. “You warning me or testing me?”
“Maybe both.”
“I can take both.”
Of course he could. Of course he would say it like that, standing there with diamonds in his ears and the easy arrogance of a man who had not yet been ruined by the thing he wanted, who still believed ambition was a field he could cross without stepping on buried bones. Ivy looked at him and felt an old, unwelcome tenderness stir beneath her caution, the kind reserved for young actors at the beginning of the climb, when their hunger was still clean, before managers taught them to speak in angles and interviews taught them to smile with only half their mouths.
Tyriq Withers was not innocent. No man with eyes like that was innocent. But he was early. There was still something raw beneath the polish, something unbranded and unflattened, some dangerous inner flame that Hollywood had not yet figured out how to put behind glass and sell back to the public. He had the face of a future obsession, the height of a leading man, the mouth of a scandal, and the stillness of someone who had already decided that the world could come for him if it wanted to, but it would not find him easy prey.
“You think because you’re pretty and talented, this place won’t eat you?” Ivy asked.
Tyriq’s gaze did not move.
“I think because I’m pretty and talented, people gon’ try.”
Ivy paused.
He lifted one shoulder, casual as tidewater licking at the edge of a cliff.
“I also think I’m not stupid.”
“No one said you were.”
“Nah, you just keep talking to me like I’m a boy who wandered too close to the fire.”
There it was again. The accuracy. The hook beneath the honey. Ivy turned toward the bar, needing somewhere else to put her eyes, but Tyriq’s reflection found her in the mirror behind the bottles, tall and dark and gilded by chandelier light, looking at her as if her turning away was merely another language he had already begun to learn.
“I’m talking to you like a woman who has seen the fire do what fire does,” she said.
He was quiet for a moment, and in that quiet the party swelled around them, laughter cresting and breaking, glasses chiming, camera flashes bleeding white against the far wall where people were practicing being seen. When Tyriq spoke again, his voice had lost none of its swagger, but the heat of it had lowered into something steadier, something that touched the back of Ivy’s neck like a palm that had not yet earned the right to land.
“Then don’t save me from it,” he said. “Tell me where it burns.”
Ivy looked back at him before she could stop herself. That was the thing with him, she was beginning to realize. Tyriq flirted like a man who enjoyed the game, but listened like a man who understood that the game was not the prize. He had come to her with a grin sharp enough to cut fruit from a branch, with all that height and color and sinful symmetry, but every time she offered him a shallow surface to skate over, he stepped beneath it instead. Not clumsily. Not greedily. With patience. With nerve.
“You ask a lot of questions,” Ivy said.
“I asked one.”
“You implied several.”
“I’m an actor,” he said, mouth curving. “Subtext matters.”
That pulled a laugh out of her before she could lock it away, and Tyriq’s face warmed with satisfaction, not smugness exactly, though there was enough of that to make him insufferable, but pleasure. He liked her amused. He liked her difficult. He liked the fact that she did not melt beneath his attention like sugar in hot tea. That knowledge moved between them like a live thing.
“You’re an actor now?” she asked.
His brows lifted. “Now?”
“You said it very confidently for someone with two episodes and a death scene.”
“I booked a film too.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thank you.”
“With lines?”
“Several.”
“Living through the end?”
“Don’t know yet. They keep changing the script.”
Ivy smiled into her drink.
Tyriq leaned in a fraction, just enough for his shadow to fall warmer across her shoulder.
“But you know what’s funny?”
“What?”
“You teasing me like that, but you not asking because you think I can’t act.”
Ivy stilled.
His eyes sharpened, blue turning ocean-deep beneath the light.
“You asking because you think I can.”
She tried to answer too quickly, but no words came, and Tyriq’s smile returned, smaller now, quieter, more dangerous because it was not just flirtation anymore. He had caught her seeing him. Worse, he had caught her respecting something in him. That was intimate. More intimate than if he had touched her knee beneath the bar. More indecent than if his mouth had brushed her ear. The body could lie. Attention rarely did.
“You have a good face,” Ivy said, because it was easier than saying anything else.
“I got more than that.”
“I’m sure your agent tells you so every morning.”
“My agent tells me I need to smile more in rooms like this and stop looking like I’m deciding whether I want to fight somebody.”
“And are you?”
“Depends who interrupts me.”
The answer came so smoothly that Ivy blinked, and then she followed his gaze just enough to see a woman across the room waving lightly in Tyriq’s direction. Mid-thirties, sleek ponytail, black dress, phone in hand, the unmistakable expression of representation trying not to panic in public. His agent, most likely, or publicist, or some handler who had dragged him here with instructions to network, smile, shake hands, collect contacts, become visible without becoming messy. Tyriq did not move.
Ivy looked back at him, amused.
“You’re supposed to be working the room.”
“I am.”
“No, you’re talking to me.”
“Like I said.”
“Tyriq.”
He loved when she said his name. She could see it now, could see the tiny shift it caused in him, the flicker of heat behind his eyes, the almost imperceptible tightening of his jaw as if he had to stop himself from reacting too openly. Ivy filed that away before she could ask herself why.
“You are just starting out,” she said, her voice lowering into something serious because she knew the shape of this particular cliff and did not want to watch him step backward over it. “You should be shaking hands, meeting directors, letting people see you in rooms where you don’t blend into the wallpaper.”
Tyriq’s expression softened, but the swagger did not leave him; it simply settled deeper, as natural to him as breath, as impossible to remove as salt from the sea.
“I don’t blend into wallpaper.”
“No, you don’t.”
The admission landed between them like a hand laid flat against a chest. His eyes held hers.
“And I saw who I wanted to see.”
Ivy swallowed. There it was. Plain. Unashamed. No little dance around it, no polite exit ramp, no laugh to soften the blade. He wanted her, and he said it the way other men announced facts about the weather, not careless, but certain. She had been desired loudly before, crudely before, publicly before, in ways that felt less like admiration and more like being appraised for auction. This was different. Tyriq’s want did not paw at her. It stood in front of her, broad-shouldered and unapologetic, waiting to see whether she had the nerve to look back at it without flinching.
“You don’t know what you want,” she said, but it sounded weak even to her.
Tyriq’s mouth curved.
“See, you keep doing that.”
“Doing what?”
“Talking for me.”
“I’m making an observation.”
“So am I.”
“And what are you observing now?”
His gaze moved over her slowly, but again, maddeningly, he did not let it turn cheap. He looked at the careful set of her shoulders, the exhaustion beneath her makeup, the guarded humor at her mouth, the hand wrapped around a glass she probably did not need, the elegance she wore like armor because the world had taught her that softness needed witnesses and witnesses could not always be trusted.
“I’m observing that you’re tired,” he said. “I’m observing that you keep giving me reasons I should leave, but you haven’t told me to leave. I’m observing that you like honesty, but only when you can control how much of it comes at you. And I’m observing that the age thing don’t bother you as much as the fact that it doesn’t bother me.”
Ivy stared at him.
“You rehearse that?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
“I’d deliver it better if I rehearsed it.”
“That was you doing badly?”
“That was me being nice.”
She laughed again, and this time there was no disguising the warmth in it. It loosened something in her face, something that made Tyriq’s gaze flicker, not down, not away, but deeper, as if he had just seen a door open in a house he had been admiring from the road. He liked her laugh. Damn him, he liked her laugh too openly.
“You are not as charming as you think you are,” Ivy said.
“I’m exactly as charming as I think I am.”
“Terrible.”
“Effective.”
“Debatable.”
“But you still here.”
“So are you.”
“Because I want to be.”
The simplicity of it made her chest tighten. That was the problem with men like Tyriq, Ivy thought. Not young men. Not actors. Not beautiful men. Men like him specifically, men who did not hide behind irony, who did not drape desire in plausible deniability so they could retreat later and claim you misunderstood. He stood in the open field of what he wanted and let the lightning come. Ivy had forgotten how erotic it could be, being wanted without being tricked into admitting it first.
She took another sip of her drink, mostly to give herself time, but Tyriq’s gaze dropped to the glass and stayed there long enough for her to notice.
“What?” she asked.
“You need to eat.”
“Again with this?”
“Yes, again with this.”
“I am not a child.”
“Good.”
The word came out lower than expected, and Ivy’s eyes snapped to his. Tyriq did not smile. That was worse. The air between them altered so quickly it felt atmospheric, the shift of pressure before a summer storm, the sea drawing itself back from the shore before returning with force. Good. One word, nothing more, and yet it moved over Ivy’s skin like a thumb dragged lightly across a matchbook. There was no explicitness in it, no vulgarity, no performance for the room, but the implication was there, dark and warm and adult enough to make her remember the exact difference between being handled carelessly and being handled by someone who paid attention.
Tyriq’s eyes stayed on hers.
“I know you’re not a child.”
Ivy’s voice thinned despite her best efforts.
“Then stop fussing.”
“I’m not fussing.”
“You are.”
“I’m taking inventory.”
“Of me?”
“Of what you need.”
A laugh escaped her, softer now, less defended.
“You are very sure you know what I need.”
“No,” he said, and that one word surprised her because it carried no flirtation at all. “I know what I see. There’s a difference.”
For the first time since he had approached her, Ivy let herself look at him without strategy. Really look. He was younger, yes, and there was no use pretending otherwise. Twenty-seven sat on him not like immaturity, but like voltage. There was still speed in him, still hunger, still that beginning-of-the-road brightness beneath the composure, but there was also discipline in the way he held himself, a steadiness that did not feel borrowed. He had the confidence of someone who had been underestimated often enough to become uninterested in convincing people too quickly. Let them doubt. Let them learn. Let them clap later. It was a dangerous kind of patience. The kind that made a woman wonder what else he knew how to wait for.
A server passed behind him with a tray of small plates, and Tyriq turned just enough to catch her attention without fully taking his focus off Ivy. It should have been arrogant, the ease of it, the way people responded to his presence before they seemed to realize they had done so, but Ivy could not even pretend it did not suit him. He asked for something low and polite, voice softened by manners that made his earlier audacity even more frustrating, and when the server left, he turned back to Ivy as if nothing important in the world had happened outside the narrow country of their conversation.
“I didn’t ask you for food,” she said.
“I know.”
“And yet.”
“And yet,” he agreed.
“You always this bossy?”
“When I’m right.”
“And when you’re wrong?”
“I correct myself.”
Ivy studied him.
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I expect you to find out.”
The words were not loud, but they landed heavy. There was a beat where neither of them moved. Ivy felt the shape of the invitation beneath the sentence, not to his bed, not even to his life, not yet, but to the possibility of discovery, to the unsettling idea that this man might be exactly as direct tomorrow as he was tonight. That he might not vanish when the music changed. That he might not turn into smoke the second she reached for substance.
“You’re dangerous,” she said.
Tyriq’s smile returned, faint and wicked.
“You knew that when I walked up.”
“I knew you were pretty.”
“Beautiful,” he corrected.
Ivy blinked, then laughed despite herself. “Excuse me?”
“You said it in your head.”
“You don’t know what I said in my head.”
“I know you ain’t look at me like I was just pretty.”
The audacity. The accuracy. Ivy shook her head slowly, unable to decide whether she wanted to slap the confidence off him or study it under glass.
“You are insufferable.”
“You’re smiling.”
“I smile at funerals sometimes. It doesn’t mean I’m happy.”
“That’s dark.”
“That’s experience.”
“There she go again.”
“With what?”
“Trying to scare me.”
Ivy’s smile faded. Tyriq noticed immediately, and the pleasure in his expression shifted into focus, his attention tightening around her not like a trap, but like shelter drawn closer before rain.
“I’m not trying to scare you,” she said after a moment. “I’m trying to be honest with you.”
“Then be honest.”
“I am.”
“No,” he said gently, which somehow made it harder to bear. “You’re being careful.”
Ivy’s jaw tightened. Tyriq leaned one elbow against the bar, his body still angled toward her, still close enough for his warmth to reach but not close enough to touch. He was letting her decide the distance, which irritated her because it made his nearness feel chosen by her too.
“You think careful is dishonest?” she asked.
“I think careful is what people do when honesty cost them too much before.”
The sentence struck something. Not dramatically. Not like thunder splitting a tree. More like water finding a crack in stone and making a home there. Ivy looked at him, really looked, and for one terrible second she imagined what it would feel like to let a man like him see the less curated parts of her, the places fame had bruised, the places love had failed to be gentle, the places thirty-five had taught her to keep locked because people liked a grown woman’s strength better when they did not have to witness the exhaustion underneath it.
“You’re too young to be talking like that,” she said.
Tyriq’s eyes softened, but his mouth curved because he was still him, still arrogant enough to be beautiful with it.
“And you’re too grown to keep using my age as a hiding place.”
Ivy’s lips parted. Nothing came out. Tyriq nodded once, like he had proven a point but was kind enough not to celebrate too loudly.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “That’s what I thought.”
The server returned with a small plate of something delicate and expensive, all architectural greens, fruit, and a piece of bread crisped golden enough to look like it had been stolen from a goddess’s breakfast table. Tyriq took it with a murmured thank you, set it between them, and slid it toward Ivy with two fingers. She looked at the plate. Then at him.
“I don’t eat strange food from strange men.”
“I’m not strange.”
“You walked up to me at a bar and started reading me like scripture.”
“You liked it.”
“I tolerated it.”
“You smiled.”
“I regret that.”
“No, you don’t.”
She picked up the piece of bread only because her hand was shaking and he had noticed, and because she would rather feed herself than give him the satisfaction of being right while she sat there pretending hunger was beneath her. The first bite was crisp, salty, bright with something citrusy and sharp, and her body responded with immediate gratitude that made her want to roll her eyes at herself. Tyriq watched her eat with a satisfaction so quiet it felt indecent.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said.
“Like what?”
“Like you won something.”
“I did.”
“It’s bread, Tyriq.”
“It’s you listening.”
Ivy stopped chewing for half a second. He did not tease her for it. That was becoming the worst part, honestly. He knew when to press and when to let the moment breathe. He understood rhythm. Maybe that was the actor in him, she thought, the instinct for pauses, for silence, for the tension that lived between lines more than inside them. Or maybe it was just him. Maybe Tyriq Withers was dangerous because he knew how to make a woman feel like every small surrender was witnessed without being exploited.
“I don’t usually listen to men I meet at bars,” Ivy said.
“I don’t usually leave my agent hanging to feed women at bars.”
“She looks stressed.”
“She is.”
“You should go.”
“I should.”
He did not move. Ivy hated the heat that crawled up her neck.
“You’re not going?”
“Not yet.”
“Why?”
Tyriq’s eyes held hers, steady, confident, absolutely unashamed.
“Because I want you.”
The words did not shock her because she had not known. They shocked her because he did not dress them in anything prettier. No joke. No metaphor. No little grin to make it less dangerous. Just the truth, placed before her like an offering at an altar neither of them had agreed to build and both of them suddenly stood before. The party went soft at the edges. Ivy could still hear everything — the laughter, the music, the clink of glass, the artificial thunder of celebrity weather moving through an expensive room — but it all became distant, like sound traveling across water. Tyriq’s voice stayed near.
“I want you,” he said again, quieter now, not because he was unsure, but because repetition made the sentence heavier. “And not in the way men in here probably been wanting you all night.”
Ivy’s fingers tightened around the stem of her glass.
“You don’t know how men have wanted me.”
“I know how men look when they only see a body.”
His gaze moved to her face, and stayed there.
“I also know how I’m looking at you.”
Ivy breathed in slowly, and the air felt too warm going down.
“You’re very confident for someone admitting that to a woman who already told you no.”
“You told me no to your number.”
“And you think that’s different?”
“I think no means no,” he said, calm as bedrock beneath stormwater. “I also think wanting you ain’t a crime as long as I respect what you do with it.”
God. That was the part that made her feel stripped without being touched. Respect had no business being that sensual, but from him, here, with his blue eyes steady and his mouth softened around restraint, it moved through her like heat. It was one thing to be desired by a man who would test every boundary to see which ones gave way under pressure. It was another to be desired by one who saw the boundary, leaned his shoulder near it, and waited for her to decide whether the gate opened. Ivy had prepared herself for temptation. She had not prepared herself for patience.
“You say things like you’ve practiced them,” she said, though her voice lacked its earlier bite.
Tyriq smiled faintly.
“I’m just telling the truth pretty.”
“That’s still performance.”
“Everything is performance in here.”
He glanced around the room then, briefly, taking in the glittering bodies, the curated laughter, the famous faces arranged beneath soft light like offerings to a god that fed on visibility. When he looked back at Ivy, the swagger returned, but it was sharpened by something almost private.
“But this?” he said, gesturing once between them. “This ain’t fake.”
“You don’t know that yet.”
“I know what fake feels like.”
He said it too quietly for someone who had not been burned. Ivy caught that. He saw her catch it. For the first time, a flicker of guardedness moved through him, not enough to close him off, but enough to remind her that he was not only beauty and confidence and youth. There was a life there too, unspooled behind him, not as long as hers perhaps, not as publicly weathered, but real all the same. People loved to flatten younger men into appetite and ambition, but Tyriq stood before her with both, yes, and also something more complicated beneath the skin.
“You’ve been in enough fake?” Ivy asked.
His mouth curved, though the smile did not quite reach his eyes.
“I’m an actor trying to break into Hollywood, Ivy. Half the people who hug me don’t know if they like me yet. They just like that somebody told them they should.”
She was quiet. That sentence did something to the air between them. For all his swagger, for all the lazy confidence and beautiful audacity, there it was: the thin, sharp edge of beginning. Tyriq had entered a world where everyone smiled with measuring tape hidden behind their teeth, where people shook your hand and weighed your usefulness in the same motion, where desirability could get you through the door but not always keep you from being devoured once inside. Ivy knew that road. She knew the early parties, the names forgotten on purpose, the small humiliations dressed as advice, the way success arrived in flashes before it became a shelter.
“You’ll get used to it,” she said, though the words tasted bitter.
“I don’t want to.”
That surprised her. Tyriq looked at her, the gold light catching the line of his cheekbone, the diamonds in his ears, the clean shape of a face the industry would try to own if he let it.
“I’ll learn it,” he said. “I’ll play when I need to. I’m not naive. But I don’t want to get used to people making me less human because they think I might be useful one day.”
Ivy had no immediate answer.
He shrugged once, as if he had not just handed her something honest.
“Besides,” he added, mouth curving back into something wicked enough to save them both from too much sincerity, “if I get too used to fake, I might miss when a fine woman at the bar actually likes me.”
Ivy exhaled a laugh, grateful and annoyed.
“I never said I liked you.”
“No, but you keep not leaving.”
“I was here first.”
“And I came over second.”
“Exactly.”
“Now we’re here together.”
She stared at him, then looked down at the plate because the smile was coming and she refused to give him the full view of it.
“You’re impossible.”
“I’m consistent.”
“You’re a menace.”
“I’ve heard that too.”
“I’m starting to think everyone in your life is very honest with you.”
“They try,” he said. “I’m hardheaded.”
“I would have never guessed.”
His grin flashed, and for a moment he looked younger, not childish, but bright in a way that softened the hard edges of his beauty. It was disarming. Unfairly so. Then his agent waved again from across the room, this time with more urgency, and Tyriq finally looked over long enough to lift one hand in acknowledgment.
Ivy followed the gesture.
“You really should go.”
“I know.”
“This is your job.”
“I know that too.”
“And yet you’re still standing here.”
His eyes returned to her, and the humor in them eased into that same steady want that had made her breath misbehave earlier.
“I told you,” he said. “I saw who I wanted to see.”
Ivy’s throat tightened.
“You don’t even know what that means.”
“I know exactly what it means for tonight.”
“And what does it mean?”
“It means I’m going to walk over there,” he said, nodding toward his agent without looking away from Ivy, “shake whatever hands she tells me to shake, smile at whoever needs to feel important, act like I’m not thinking about coming back over here, and then I’m going to come back over here.”
Ivy arched a brow, grateful for the return of teasing because the sincerity had begun to feel too much like a tide at her knees.
“And if I’m gone?”
“Then I’ll find you.”
“Confident.”
“Determined.”
“Stalking is not romantic.”
“Good thing I said find, not follow.”
“Semantics.”
“Subtext,” he corrected again.
She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing. Tyriq stepped back half a pace, and Ivy felt the absence of his warmth immediately, which was humiliating enough that she lifted her glass to disguise it. He noticed anyway, because of course he did, but for once he showed mercy and said nothing. Instead, he reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and pulled out a plain black card, the kind actors carried when they were still early enough to need cards and confident enough not to be embarrassed by it. He set it on the bar beside her plate, two fingers resting on it for a moment before sliding away.
“I’m not giving you my number,” Ivy reminded him.
“I remember.”
“Then what is that?”
“My number.”
She looked at the card. Then at him.
“That is not how this works.”
“That’s exactly how it works.”
“I said no.”
“You said you weren’t giving me yours,” he said, and there was that swagger again, smooth as oil over dark water. “I heard you.”
“So you gave me yours?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“So when you decide you want to call me, you don’t have to go looking.”
Ivy stared at him, half offended, half fascinated, fully aware that her pulse was no longer behaving like something she owned.
“You really think I’m going to call you?”
Tyriq leaned in just slightly, not enough to crowd her, only enough for his voice to lower into that private place again, that warm, dangerous register that made every word feel like it had been placed directly against her skin.
“No,” he said. “I think you’re going to tell yourself you’re not going to call me.”
Ivy’s eyes narrowed.
“And then?”
His smile came slow.
“And then you’re going to remember I’m not scared of you.”
Her breath caught, small enough to deny if anyone asked, but they both knew. Tyriq’s eyes flicked over her face once more, lingering with an attention so thorough it felt like touch, though his hands remained respectfully to himself.
“And you’re going to like that.”
Then he straightened, leaving her with the card, the plate, the heat, and the deeply inconvenient realization that she had not wanted him to leave as much as she had wanted to see whether he would.
“Eat,” he said, voice returning to that easy command.
Ivy gave him a look.
He grinned.
“Please,” he added, with a sweetness so false and charming she nearly threw the bread at him.
“Go work the room, Tyriq.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The ma’am hit worse the second time. He knew it too. He walked away with the kind of unhurried confidence that made people look before they understood why they were looking, shoulders broad beneath black fabric, head high, stride loose and certain, every inch of him giving not a man desperate to be chosen, but one already convinced he belonged wherever his feet landed. Ivy watched him cross the room, watched his agent begin speaking before he fully reached her, watched him nod, smile, extend a hand to a director Ivy recognized immediately.
And because she had been in the game a long time, she saw it. The shift. The director had glanced at Tyriq politely at first, with the mild interest people gave promising young faces they had been told might matter soon. Then Tyriq smiled, said something, and the man’s attention sharpened. His posture opened. The conversation held. Tyriq did not fidget, did not over-laugh, did not shrink beneath proximity to power. He stood there like a coastline daring the ocean to keep arriving, like he knew erosion was just another form of being shaped for greatness.
Ivy picked up the card. Tyriq Withers. Actor. A number beneath it. No management email. No agent listed. No glossy logo. Just his name, his title, and the audacity of giving her a direct line to him as if directness itself was a signature. She should have left it there. She should have. Instead, Ivy slid it beneath her phone.
…
Later that night, when the party had finally spat her back out into the city, Ivy Jermaine returned to her hotel room alone. Not lonely. There was a difference. Lonely was a hunger, a raw little animal pacing behind the ribs, begging to be fed by any voice willing to call it beautiful. Alone was cleaner than that. Alone was the lock clicking shut behind her. Alone was the hush of an expensive suite high above Manhattan, where the windows looked out over the city like black glass over a restless sea, all glittering lights and yellow taxis moving below like ships with lanterns caught in fog. Alone was the soft groan that left her body the moment she stepped out of her heels and felt the floor beneath her bare feet, cool and solid as old marble.
The room smelled faintly of lilies, linen, and the citrusy spray housekeeping used to convince guests that exhaustion could be sanitized if the sheets were crisp enough. Ivy stood in the entryway for a moment, dress still clinging to her like a second skin, phone in one hand, clutch in the other, her earrings heavy against her neck. The silence received her without applause. No cameras. No shouting assistants. No stylists pinching fabric at her waist. No publicists reminding her who to greet, who to avoid, who had liked something messy about her three years ago and should therefore be handled with caution.
Just Ivy. Thirty-five years old. Tired down to the bone. Still beautiful, because beauty had become so practiced on her that it stayed even when she no longer had the energy to hold it up. She dropped her clutch onto the console table and walked deeper into the suite, the hem of her dress whispering around her legs like dark water around a dock. The city watched her from beyond the glass, neon and moonlight braided together over the skyline, and for a moment Ivy felt like Persephone returning not to the underworld, but to some quiet room between seasons, one where she could take off the crown, unclasp the armor, and admit that being admired all night had somehow left her feeling untouched.
That was the strange cruelty of fame. Everyone looked. So few people saw. Her hand stilled on the zipper at the side of her dress. Tyriq Withers had seen too much. The thought arrived without permission, warm and inconvenient, slipping through her exhaustion like tidewater through a crack in stone. She closed her eyes, and there he was again, leaning against the bar like trouble had learned manners, all blue eyes, diamonds, broad shoulders, and that low, steady voice that seemed to speak beneath the skin rather than above it. I’m talking to you.
Ivy opened her eyes quickly.
“No,” she murmured to herself, because sometimes a woman had to speak sense aloud before her body started making reckless legal arguments.
She moved into the bathroom, where the lights were soft enough to be merciful, and braced both hands against the marble sink. Her reflection looked back at her, composed but not untouched, lips still glossy, eyes lined dark, hair arranged into something sleek and intentional. The dress made her look like a goddess dragged from a storm, all curves and gold undertones and exhaustion disguised as elegance. Tyriq had looked at her like he knew the disguise by name. That was what bothered her.
Not the wanting. Ivy knew what to do with wanting. Wanting was common; it leaned too close at parties, sent bottles to tables, slid into DMs with flame emojis and spelling errors, wrapped itself in compliments so thin they tore if you touched them too hard. Wanting had followed her for years in cologne clouds and rented confidence. Tyriq’s want had been different. It had stood still. It had waited. It had said, plainly and without shame, I want you, and then respected the distance between them like restraint itself was part of the seduction.
Ivy exhaled, slow and annoyed, before reaching up to remove one earring, then the other. They landed on the counter with two delicate sounds, tiny offerings placed before the mirror. She unpinned her hair next, letting it fall loose around her shoulders, and the woman in the reflection softened by degrees. Less goddess. More mortal. Less Ivy Jermaine, the public-facing thing. More Ivy, the woman whose neck hurt, whose feet ached, whose heart had become too disciplined to run toward anything just because it felt warm.
Her phone buzzed once against the counter. She looked down. Not a message. A notification from a news account. A photo of her leaving the party had already surfaced.
Ivy Jermaine stuns at pre-Met event.
She stared at the headline, then laughed under her breath without humor. Stuns. As if she had not spent the entire night holding herself together with caffeine, under-eye concealer, and God’s leftover patience. She turned the phone face down. Then turned it face up again. Because beneath it, partly tucked into the case from when she had slid it there at the bar, was Tyriq’s card.
Plain black. White letters. Tyriq Withers. Actor. His number beneath it. Nothing else. No agent. No brand. No glossy little emblem trying to make him look more important than he was. Just his name. His dream. His audacity.
Ivy picked the card up like it might be hot.
“You are not calling that man,” she told her reflection.
Her reflection, traitorous thing, said nothing.
She carried the card with her into the bedroom and set it on the nightstand, far enough away to suggest discipline, close enough to ruin the lie. Then she changed, slowly, peeling herself out of the dress with the careful exhaustion of someone unwrapping from a role. The fabric fell down her body and pooled around her feet like a shed shadow. She stepped out of it and reached for the silk robe hanging near the closet, tying it loosely around her waist before sitting on the edge of the bed.
The suite was too quiet now. Not peaceful. Quiet. There was a difference there too. Peace had weight. Quiet had space. And space had a way of filling itself with thoughts. Tyriq’s voice came back first. You’re too grown to keep using my age as a hiding place.
Ivy’s mouth pressed into a line.
Cocky little—
No.
Not little.
That was the problem. He was twenty-seven, yes, but there had been nothing little about him. Nothing uncertain, nothing pleading, nothing boyish in the way he stood before her and made his interest known without asking her to reassure him for having it. He had not acted like her age was a hurdle. He had acted like it was information. A fact. Eight years, measured and dismissed, as irrelevant to his desire as the weather outside. She should have found that absurd. Instead, it had touched something ancient in her. Some buried, feminine, saltwater thing that remembered being wanted by men who did not ask permission from fear.
Her hand reached for the card before she could stop herself. She stared at the number. Put the card down. Picked it up again.
“This is embarrassing,” she whispered.
The city blinked beyond the windows, unconcerned. Ivy unlocked her phone. Opened the keypad. Typed the first three digits. Deleted them. Locked the phone. Threw it onto the bed beside her. Then sat there, staring straight ahead, robe slipping off one shoulder, the ache in her neck pulsing beneath her skin, pride and curiosity wrestling in her chest like two gods fighting over a coastline.
She lasted all of forty-seven seconds. Then she snatched the phone back up with a frustrated little inhale and dialed before she could talk herself into dignity.
It rang once. Not even fully once. He answered like he had been waiting with the phone already in his hand.
“Ivy.”
Her whole body went still. Not hello. Not who is this. Her name. Low. Certain. Warm with something that sounded far too much like satisfaction.
Ivy closed her eyes.
“You don’t know it’s me.”
Tyriq’s voice came through the line with a smile in it.
“Yeah, I do.”
“How?”
“Because I gave one woman my number tonight.”
“That doesn’t mean I was going to call.”
“But you did.”
Ivy stared at the ceiling like it might offer help, but the ceiling, like all expensive hotel ceilings, remained useless and tastefully lit.
“You answer the phone for every unknown number like that?”
“Nah.”
“So you were waiting.”
“I was hoping.”
The honesty sat between them differently through the phone. At the bar, it had been gilded by chandeliers, sharpened by eye contact, protected by the noise of the party around them. Here, in her hotel room, with the city pressed dark and glittering against the windows and her robe loose on her skin, his honesty became more intimate, stripped of spectacle. There was no room to hide inside a crowd now. No drink to sip. No server to interrupt. No agent waving him away. Just his voice. Just her breath. Just the thin electric line between them, humming like a wire stretched over deep water.
Ivy shifted on the bed, tucking one leg beneath her.
“You always this available?”
“For you?”
She huffed softly. “Careful.”
“I am.”
“You don’t sound careful.”
“I sound honest.”
“You sound pleased with yourself.”
“I am.”
“At least you admit it.”
“I told you earlier,” he said, his voice dropping slightly. “I don’t have to pretend with you.”
That was unfair. He had no right to make something so simple sound like a hand at the back of her neck, guiding her gently out of armor. Ivy looked toward the windows, where her reflection was faintly visible against the city, silk robe, bare shoulder, phone pressed to her ear. She looked like a woman caught between a locked door and the sea.
“You made an impression tonight,” she said.
“Good.”
“That wasn’t necessarily a compliment.”
“I know.”
“You take everything well.”
“No,” Tyriq said, and the answer came so smoothly she could almost see him leaning somewhere, one shoulder against a wall, mouth curved, eyes steady. “I take you well.”
Ivy’s breath slipped. Quietly. Barely. But the silence after it told her he had heard. Of course he had heard.
“Tyriq.”
“Yeah.”
There it was again, that slight change in him when she said his name. Even through the phone, she could feel it, the way the air thickened, the way his reply landed lower, rougher at the edge. Ivy had spent years being desired in rooms full of people, but there was something obscene about realizing desire could travel through a single syllable and still arrive intact.
“You are very dangerous on the phone,” she said.
He gave a low laugh, soft as thunder far out over water.
“I’m better in person.”
Her eyes closed. The room tilted a little, though she had barely drunk enough for that to be the reason.
“You’re very sure of that.”
“I’m very sure of a lot of things.”
“Like?”
“Like you’re sitting somewhere pretending you didn’t call because you wanted to hear my voice.”
Ivy opened her eyes.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me.”
“I called because I was curious.”
“That’s one word for it.”
“It’s the correct word.”
“No,” he said, that smile still in his voice, insolent and intimate all at once. “It’s the safe word.”
The silence that followed was so charged Ivy felt it move over her skin. Not vulgar. Not explicit. Worse. Accurate. She pressed her tongue lightly against the back of her teeth, trying not to smile, trying not to let him hear that she was smiling, because men like Tyriq fed on openings and she had no intention of becoming a meal.
“You think you know so much,” she said.
“I think I know enough.”
“You met me two hours ago.”
“And you called me thirty minutes after you got to your room.”
Ivy froze. Her eyes narrowed, though he could not see it.
“How would you know when I got to my room?”
“Because you told me you were leaving when you walked past me.”
“I said goodnight.”
“You said, ‘Enjoy shaking hands, Tyriq,’ and then you left with your assistant.”
“You remember that?”
“I remember most things involving you.”
The line went quiet again. Ivy hated how much that did to her. Words were easy to dismiss when they were grand. Men could make cathedrals out of exaggeration when they wanted something, could turn a compliment into stained glass and still leave you cold beneath it. But details had weight. Details meant attention had roots. Details meant something had gone into the earth.
“You should be asleep,” she said, because it was safer than admitting anything else.
“So should you.”
“I’m older. I can survive on less.”
“That’s not how bodies work.”
“You’re an actor now and a doctor?”
“I’m a man with eyes. You were exhausted tonight.”
“I looked that bad?”
“No.” His answer came immediately. “You looked beautiful.”
Ivy’s mouth softened despite herself.
Then he added, quieter, “And tired.”
Something about the separation of those things undid her more than the compliment itself. Beautiful and tired. Not beautiful despite tired. Not beautiful but tired. Both. Seen together. Allowed to exist in the same room without one canceling the other.
Ivy looked down at her hand resting against the white duvet, at the faint tremor still there from too much caffeine and too little food, at the phone glowing against her cheek like a small, dangerous moon.
“You notice too much,” she whispered.
“No, I notice what people miss.”
Her throat tightened.
“Why?”
There was a pause on his end. For the first time, Tyriq did not answer quickly. When he spoke, the swagger was still there, but quieter now, not gone so much as set aside out of respect for the dark.
“Because people missed a lot with me.”
Ivy’s chest changed shape around the sentence. She could picture him then, not at the party, not gilded by chandeliers and dressed in black, but somewhere younger, somewhere before the industry had begun sharpening its teeth around him, learning to stand tall because being overlooked had taught him the cost of shrinking. It was only a glimpse, but it was enough to remind her that his confidence was not empty decoration. It had been built. Maybe out of talent. Maybe out of survival. Maybe out of the stubborn refusal to wait for permission.
“Tyriq,” she said again, softer this time.
He exhaled through the line.
“Say my name like that again and I’m gon’ start thinking you miss me.”
“I don’t know you well enough to miss you.”
“You know me well enough to call.”
“You gave me your number.”
“You still had to use it.”
Ivy laughed quietly, tipping her head back against the headboard.
“You are not letting me have anything tonight.”
“I let you have no at the bar.”
The reminder settled over her. Gentle. Respectful. Heavy.
“Yes,” she said, quieter. “You did.”
“I meant what I said.”
“I know.”
“No,” he said. “I want you to really know. I’m confident, Ivy, not careless.”
The distinction moved through her like warm rain. She was silent long enough that the city seemed to grow louder beyond the glass, sirens in the distance, traffic murmuring below, the whole island breathing beneath its bright skin.
“I’m not easy,” she said at last.
Tyriq’s answer came without hesitation.
“I didn’t come over because I thought you were.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“I have a life.”
“I figured.”
“A full one.”
“I hope so.”
“I have a career, history, scars, habits I’m too old to explain, and a very low tolerance for being embarrassed.”
“I don’t want to embarrass you.”
“You might anyway.”
“Then I’d fix it.”
Her brows drew together.
“You say that like it’s simple.”
“No,” he said. “I say it like I’m willing.”
Willing. That word landed differently. Not promising perfection. Not selling fantasy. Just willingness, which Ivy had learned was rarer than love in some men. Love could be declared. Willingness had to show up on ugly days, had to carry groceries, had to listen without turning defensive, had to stand still when someone else’s fear came dressed as attitude. She did not know Tyriq well enough for that word to matter. And still, it did.
“You’re twenty-seven,” she said again, but this time the sentence sounded less like a warning and more like the last wall trying to remember what it had been built for.
Tyriq hummed softly.
“And you’re thirty-five.”
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
“That’s all you have to say?”
“I can count, Ivy.”
She laughed, and the sound came easier now, slipping into the room like light under a door.
“You’re so annoying.”
“You called me.”
“I’m hanging up.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I should.”
“You should.”
Neither of them moved toward goodbye. The silence became something else then, not empty, not awkward, but thick with the intimacy of two people standing on opposite shores and realizing the tide between them was coming in. Ivy could hear faint noise behind him now, distant voices, a low pulse of music, something that sounded like an elevator chime or a lobby door opening. He was not in a bedroom. Not fully alone. Wherever he was, he had stepped away from someone, from something, to answer her.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“Downstairs.”
Ivy sat up slowly. Her robe slipped further off one shoulder, but she did not fix it.
“Downstairs where?”
A pause.
Then, softly, with that same maddening calm, “Your hotel.”
Her heart gave one hard, foolish beat.
“Tyriq.”
“I’m not at your door,” he said immediately, and there it was again, the restraint arriving before her fear could dress itself properly. “I’m not pressing you. I’m in the lobby because my agent booked me here too, and because I told myself if you called, I’d ask if I could see you again before the night ended.”
Ivy stared at the window, at her own reflection caught inside the city lights.
“You were going to ask?”
“Yeah.”
“And if I said no?”
“I’d go upstairs, take my ass to sleep, and try again another day.”
“Another day?”
“I told you I was determined.”
She closed her eyes, but that only made his voice closer.
“You are impossible,” she whispered.
“I’m downstairs, Ivy.”
The sentence was quiet. No command. No demand. Just truth. And somehow that made it worse, because truth left room for choice, and choice meant Ivy could not blame anyone else for what her pulse did next. She stood from the bed. Slowly. Bare feet sinking into the carpet. Phone still pressed to her ear. Across the room, the city glittered like an altar built to bad decisions and beautiful consequences.
“I’m not dressed for company,” she said.
Tyriq’s voice lowered.
“I ain’t company.”
Her breath caught. The line hummed. She could imagine him in the lobby beneath her, still in that black suit, maybe tie loosened now, maybe one hand in his pocket, maybe looking too large for the elegant furniture, too alive for the curated quiet, waiting with the patience of a tide that knew the moon had already turned.
“Ivy,” he said.
She swallowed.
“Yes?”
“Tell me to come up.”
Her hand tightened around the phone. The whole room seemed to hold its breath with her. And then, just as her lips parted, there was a soft knock at the door.
tags : @mamasturn @sheinaskirt @authentic-girl03 @k0niiii-blog @trustmymood @glizzymcguirex @ms-mosley-ifunastyyy @blackfemreaderr @blckblossom @trustmymood @unicoo @yourleogf @uniqueoutlierblog @og-goddesstrill @determinednot2fall @melaninhawtie @xoadaraox @thatssokarii @kirayuki22 @the1miscief @plan3tch1ld @daliscrim @szatears @that-one-anxious-mango @sonder-slut @saintaquarius (lmk if you wanted to be added or removed )
Summary: Part Two of You dont know my name, This is basically part one in camerons POV
Content Warnings: None, Cameron is equally as obsessed
W/C:1.7k
A/N: This is my first time writing the opposite POV, let me know what you guys think. I suggest reading Part one for the full context of their conversation, this is just Cameorns thoughts.
Inspired by(This had been on loop its such a good song):
It started as a recommendation from one of the guys on the team. They mentioned the diner on campus tucked away, quiet, good coffee, no one bothered you and that was enough for me.
I just needed a place to get a coffee in between classes and on days off. I hadn’t expected to end up with a slight obsession with the waitress there.
It was two months ago when I first saw her. I had sat down just needing a coffee and some space to work.
Her voice registered before anything else. It was soft and felt familiar even though I had never met her before. It was like the pressure from classes and football lifted from my shoulders. I glanced at her and immediately tore my eyes away. I was a thousand percent sure that was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.
Girls were never a problem for me particularly, I just knew better than to add anything complicated onto my already full plate.
People talked , how "Cameron Cade was a player and switched from girl to girl.” And maybe they were partially true there were some here and there but I wasn’t half of the whore the campus thought of me.
I stayed to myself for the most part. I could recognize a pretty girl when I saw one but it was easier this way. Less distractions and less expectations from others.
A girlfriend wasn't exactly at the forefront of my mind. Until her.
After muttering my order, a black coffee, I tried to busy myself with work but it was impossible when I knew she was around.
Whenever her back was turned or she was too busy to pay attention I was looking. There was something calming in how fluidly she moved through the space. How bright her smile was and how sweet her voice was.
I made sure to look away in time so I didn’t seem like a creep with a staring problem. She would always try to make small talk but it’s like all basic social skills were out the window when she came around.
I tried to flash a smile when I could remember how to work my face and say thank you whenever she would refill my coffee. I wasn’t trying to come off rude, hopefully she didn’t see me that way.
The feelings she produced out of me were foreign. When I decided I wanted to entertain attention from a woman it usually came easy. Most of the time they were already interested and I didn’t have to work much.
Something made me not even want to try and make an advance at her. She seems out my league, I wouldn’t risk fucking up anything.
The diner was peaceful and the spot I found allowed me to stay out the way long enough to get something done unbothered, at least when I could tear my eyes away from her to focus on my work.
It was just a plus the girl serving me coffee was out of this world gorgeous.
After an hour of multitasking assignment and staring, I left a tip and left. She more than deserved it, I was definitely satisfied with my visit and would be returning very soon.
It started off pretty tame, I would come by the diner on any off day I had and that wasn’t very often. At least not as often as I wanted too.
Our interactions never went beyond simple, ‘hello’s’ and ‘the usual?’. It was a shame I didn’t have any classes with her. I wondered what her major was.
We had never crossed paths before the diner and I was invested in learning more about her. All I knew was her name from her name tag.
First it was a coincidence, seeing her across the quad with a group of friends. That led to having conversations with those same people at a party and learning more of you through their intoxicated oversharing.
Their friend who didn’t come out to party because of homework.
‘She’s has a stem major, if she’s not working she’s studying’
She was beautiful and smart.
Next, I saw her in the dining hall. She was alone and oblivious enough to not check if anyone was looking at her. Head down in her own world.
I went the next day at the same time and she was there again. It became a routine. I hadn’t known her full schedule yet but from what I picked up, she worked afternoons during the school week and worked early on weekends. That worked well with my schedule so I was able to pop it at her job and see her.
It’s not like I just went for her, I would get work done. And I wasn’t stalking her at the quad. I just knew when she would be there and decided to sit where she would pass me.
I tried to rationalize myself going out of my way to see her. It was probably starting to borderline stalker-ish. But it was worth it. The little time I could see her even if we didn’t talk much.
Part of it being my fault because I was too scared to speak. I wasn’t sure what I was afraid of. Maybe it was the fact that most interactions I had with a woman were usually quick and for one reason. I never really did the lovey stuff. I guess I never found the right person I wanted to try it with. She felt close but I wouldn’t make her an experiment in my love life.
So watching her would have to be enough.
————
That leads me to today. It's been two months of acting like her shadow and I was used to the schedule. But after the day I had I needed to see her.
I overslept, missing my first class of the day and a test which my professor wouldn't allow a retake.
After that it was pretty smoothe sailing, until later.
At practice, the coach didn’t let anything slide. If I was off a second on anything he was on my ass. It dragged out an hour later than usual.
Not to mention the call from home, my mom reminding me that they are all back home and miss me. That they’re rooting for me.
Truth is sometimes I didn’t even want to play anymore. Being QB is nice but it has been my dads passion longer than mine, buy i coudn't let them down.
No one understood though.
I just needed some calm after the shit show that was today. That's how I ended up at the diner. It was late and they were about to close but I just needed to see her. The thought of having to wait till Wednesday for time to see her didn’t appeal to me at all.
I’d just stop by before closing and go simple.
I entered, there she was with her back turned, she spoke reminding me that they closed soon.
Her voice made me regret coming just a bit, I could tell she was tired and the last thing she wanted to do was help another person tonight.
“I’m sorry, I’ll be quick” I managed, taking a seat at the counter.
It was just us from what I could see.
She beckoned me to take a seat, she seemed far away in thought. Her back was to me again as she put on some coffee.
I loved watching her, something about her I couldn’t place. I can’t even say what I'd give to know what she was thinking.
She placed my coffee down not even needing to be reminded of what I liked. I was aware a plain black coffee wasn’t hard to remember but I’m sure she helps many people a day but the fact she reminded me at least my order meant something.
She turned back away, my voice was caught, I wanted to say something but didn’t know what.
“You always know my order.”
That was good right? A good conversation started.
“Um ... .yeah you come in a lot.” She said dismissively.
“I didn’t know it was noticeable” I tried to laugh it off.
“It is kind of my job to notice things like that.” She let out a quiet laugh.
She was right, it was her job. Nothing not special.
I’m not sure why I thought otherwise. This fucked up obsession is just in head and she has no idea how I feel and probably thinks I’m a creep.
“You’re here later than usual.” She observed. Her voice as soft as honey.
My head lifted a little. She noticed. Maybe I’m not as delusional.
It was her job dumbass. Of course.
After that the conversations didn’t last long.
She asked me about my day. This was all new, I was never able to get past simple greetings and now we were having a full conversation and she seemed genuinely interested. She made me feel like I could be vulnerable.
I didn’t feel that often.
And of course she was a good listener, something else to add to the growing list of positive qualities she possessed.
We talked back and forth for what felt like forever. Maybe it was because I didn't want the moment to end.
Smiled on our face as we sat in a comfortable silence once all was and and done.
She reminded me that it was closing time and that brought me out of my trance. All the weight I came there with felt lifted even if it was only going to last for a little.
“I’ll see you soon?” She asked me, was that hope I heard in her voice or was I tripping?
“For sure” I nodded as I gave her a smile and exited.
I tried to be nonchalant knowing that my hands were clammy from how nervous I was, hopefully she couldn’t tell.
I left the diner walking to my car trying to not jump in joy. Did the idea of seeing her again do as much to her as it did me.
I had to convince myself not to make the days I go to the diner on my schedule because I felt like I was doing too much.
All I could think of as I drove home was what my next move would be to make her mind.
Fuck all the talk about leaving her alone. That was done. She would know how I felt one way or another.
Content warning: None really, Reader is crushing hard, Slow burn
W/C: 2.6k
Inspired by:
You hadn't even realized the crush or obsession you had developed for Cameron cade, until it was too late.
You remember the first time Cameron came into the campus diner. The exchange was very brief, he sat at a quiet table, you took his order, he didn't really look at you, his head seemed else where, but he was polite enough to flash you a quick smile as he ordered a plain black coffee.
People who drank plain coffee always left you on edge but you pushed your thoughts aside. You served him, he quietly said thank you and stayed there for about an hour.
As the time passed, for some reason you couldn't focus on your job, he hadn't even paid you that much attention and you were hooked. Maybe it was his voice, how low and calm it was. Or maybe the way he carried himself, how he walked in tall like he wasn't aware of the atmosphere shifting around him.
You breezed through the hour on autopilot, taking orders, refilling coffees, balancing plates on your arm with a practiced ease. Your body knew the routine well enough to perform without your mind fully being there.
He hadn’t moved much, sitting in the booth by the window, his laptop was opened, and a hand rested against his mouth while he read something with the utmost concentration.
He looked serious and focused, not like the version of him you've heard about around campus. You always heard of Cameron Cade, The star quarterback who everyone knew of and whose name was thrown around in conversations you weren't even thought about in. He seemed careless, and untouchable. He definitely didn't look like he sat down in a diner on a Wednesday afternoon to study.
You made sure to refill his coffee every now and then, making your presence known in a subtle way. Making your voice sound extra sweet as you asked if he needed anything else which he declined. You lingered a second too long before walking away.
He still hadn't really looked at you, and you hated how disappointed that made you feel. Because to him, you were just the waitress. Meant to refill his coffee every 20 minutes and then disappear behind the counter.
After about an hour and a half he left the diner, he left and tip slightly under his coffee mug and was gone. Though hating to see him leave you were grateful to finally be able to relax, it's like you forgot how to function in the presence of someone so attractive.
You went to clean his table and your eyes flew to the folded bills underneath the mug.
Twenty dollars.
More than necessary.
Your chest tightened for reasons you didn't think you should examine too closely. It was probably nothing. Just him being polite, just a habit. But to you it felt personal, not the money or the amount, but the thought behind it. Maybe it was intentional, maybe not.
To him you were just the girl who refilled his coffee, just hands that appeared and disappeared, a face blurred in the background. You still memorized him in pieces. The way he leaned forward when focused and the furrow in his brows as he looked over the contents on his computer.
Nonetheless you cleaned his table and finished your shift, wondering when you’d see him again.
—------
That was two months ago, since then you had become more than tuned in with Cameron's schedule. You didn't mean to at first, it wasn’t intentional. Just small observations that slowly started to stack on top of each other in your brain.
He came on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays. You learned that these were the days that he didn't have football practice. Wednesdays he’d come after classes you assumed around 3 to 4 pm. And on the weekends he'd usually come early around 10 am.
It came together in pieces, bits of conversations you caught that weren't meant for you. On rare occasions his teammates would join him but very rarely.
“Coach finally gave us Wednesday off.”
“Saturday morning film got moved.”
“Yeah, ill see you sunday, I dont have practice”
Weekend Cameron was always more relaxed, sometimes he studied, sometimes he'd just sit down not doing much, leaning back in the booth like he was finally able to exist without expectation.
You didn’t entertain the idea of dating much, not seriously at least. You were a hopeless romantic and having a crush on a regular customer definitely made your shifts go by a little quicker. But you had deemed dating as something you saw but didn't experience firsthand.
You loved the idea of small things like lingering looks and accidental touches. The kind of love built slowly and naturally. That's probably why after two months into your one-sided crush for Cameron cade, you were still going so strong.
It was harmless, he didn't know of your crush or about you enough to reject you. He existed in a space where your feelings could live quietly and undisturbed. You did wonder what it would feel like to be seen by him. Not as the girl behind the counter, or a part of the background he moved through without thought.
You knew this crush would probably be fleeting…..like the rest.
You had the habit of finding a guy and developing a crush just based on the potential you thought they had. The version of them that existed before reality stepped in and changed your world view.
You’d learn something small. A personality trait that didn't sit right. A tone in their voice. A comment maybe meant as a joke that landed wrong. A way they carried themselves that didn't match the story you wrote in your head. And just like that, there was a bad taste in your mouth when you saw them and the feelings would fade over time.
You knew a crush was just a lack of information, The less you know the easier it is for your brain to fill in the blanks for you. That's why the distance between Cameron was nice for the time.
There was no risk of your view of him being shattered because you had no real access. There were no late night conversations or numbers exchanged. Nothing messy.
You knew only bits and pieces. For example,
He played football and was good from what you heard.
Liked his coffee black, never asked for sugar, or cream.
That he came to the diner on wednesdays, saturdays and sundays.
Around campus he was labeled a player. The kind of guy that never stayed too long or promised too much.
He also tipped well and had a nice simile.
You hadn’t ran into him outside of the diner so rumors were easy to tune out. Easy to separate from the quiet version of him that sat quietly in that booth.
And maybe that was the appeal. You didn't know enough to be disappointed.
Just enough to be intrigued. And that was enough.
—------
It was a Monday night, you were closing dinner as usual. The afternoon rushed long over and the only sound filling the place was the quiet radio playing a song that you most definitely have already listened to 4 times that day.
Your feet ached from hours standing and you had been counting the minutes until your shift was over since you clocked in.
Halfway through wiping down the counter the bell above the door rang, you hated how some people would come 5 minutes before closing. You just swept those floors and here this asshole comes.
“We're closing soon.” You called out, a little sharper than intended. You hadn’t even turned your back to look at who it was.
“I’m sorry, I'll be quick.”
Your hands stilled.
You turned, and your stomach dropped.
Cameron.
For a second you stared as he walked towards the counter. He wasn't supposed to be here, not today. Not on a Monday and definitely not at night.
You were not prepared for this at all, You just worked a full shift. He wasn't supposed to see this version of you.
This wasn't the version you preferred him to see. Not the one you put effort into. Effort that you hadn't even realized you were putting in. It was an unconscious habit at first.
Little things that you did at the beginning that just became a practice. On days you knew he would come your would make sure your hair looked nice, and you picked the work shirt that fit you better, concealer under your bags and lipgloss you would fix throughout your shift.
You even started putting your earrings back in, you never cared to wear them.
And now he was here.
Unplanned and out of the blue, catching you off guard.
“I-um,” You started, immediately back tracking your tone immediately softening as you straightened, fixing your posture. “It's okay to have a seat, you can still sit. I just- yeah. You're fine.”
How smooth.
You winced internally, as you turned to put a fresh pot of coffee on needing to do something with your hands.
He stepped further inside, the door swinging to a close behind him. He didn't sit in his usual seat, he sat at the counter, not his usual booth.
You busied yourself making his coffee, avoiding turning and looking at him. You couldn't believe this was happening, you had no makeup on, there was a grease stain on your shirt from a spill and you knew for sure you smelled like burnt coffee and probably sweat.
Not a good look at all.
“The usual?” You asked back, still turned to him.
“Yes ma’am.”
You could have fell out right there, something about the way he sounded calling you ma’am made your knees weak. You thought a little harder about it and maybe he called you that because he didn't know your name. Probably never even looked at your name tag. Because he doesn't car–
Your spiraling thoughts cut off as the coffee machine beeped, you hurried yourself with making his cup before turning and placing it in front of him.
“There you go”
“Thank you.”
You nodded, already starting to turn away, because it was what you always did.
Drop it off. Leave. Keep it moving.
But-
“You always know my order.”
Slowly you turned back around, He was looking at you. Like actually looking at you, not past or a brief glance.
At you.
“Um…..Yeah you come in alot.”
He gave you a nod as he processed what you said.
“I didn't know it was that noticeable.”
You let out a quiet breathe that almost turned into a laugh, "It's kind of my job to notice things like that.”
“Yeah, guess it is.” He said with a faint hint of something in his voice you couldn't quite place.
“You're here later than usual.” You added, softer this time. “I don't usually see you come in on Mondays.”
The words slipped before you could stop them.
Your stomach dropped, what if he thought that sounded creepy.
“You noticed that too?”
Heat crept up your neck. “I just work alot.”
It wasn't a lie necessarily, but it also wasn't the whole truth.
He hummed, glancing down at his coffee for a second before returning his gaze to you.
“Rough day?” You asked.
“Yeah just, practice, classes, everything all at once.” He said after a beat.
You nodded slowly, shifting your weight. “That sounds….exhausting.”
“It is,”he admitted, no hesitation. “People think it's just a game, but it's a lot more than that”
You believed him, you’d seen it.
“You come here to get away from it?” You asked quietly.
“Yeah,” he said after a second. “I do.”
Your fingers busied themselves slowly picking at the edge of the counter.
“I thought so.” You started, “You’re very quiet, You seem like you focused on something all the time”
You hoped that didn't sound weird, like you were watching him. I mean you were but he didn't need to know that.
He didn't look put off like you thought he might be.
“Its easier to think here I don't know why,” He let out a breathe, “No ones really asking anything of me when im here.”
“I get that.” You trailed off thinking of what to say next.
“What about you?” He asked. “Are you always observant or am I just special?”
Your breath caught, a small nervous laugh slipping before you could stop it.
“I think it's just the job” You said trying to save yourself. “You pick up a lot when you see the same people every day.”
He didn't seem convinced.
HIs eyes stayed on you a second longer, You felt hyper always of yourself. You had to resist the urge to fix your hair or tug at your shirt.
“Ive been coming in here for a minute now.”
“I know.” You replied without thinking.
He smiled. Not in the polite passing way you were used too, it was something different about this one. More real.
“How come this is our first full conversation?” He asked simply, like it wasn't a big deal.
You shrugged, unable to form a sentence. You hated how you froze up in situations like this.
“Are you always this quiet?”
“Not really it just depends.” you say, huffing out a laugh.
“On what?”
“Where I am, who I'm with.” You shrug.
His lips pressed together like he was holding back another smile.
“Which one is it right now?”
“Both.” You admitted. “I'm more fun outside work.” You huffed out a nervous laugh, failing at your attempt to make a joke.
He hummed, nodding with a small smirk fighting its way onto his face.
For a moment you both remained quiet, the conversation which was unexpected at first had begun to soften around the edge. The silence wasn't awkward; it had just reached a place neither of you knew how to get past.
You glanced down at the counter, wiping a spot you had already cleaned earlier.
“I should probably finish closing,” you murmur, you knew you didn't want the moment to end but it was safer this way.
“Right,” He cleared his throat and he went to grab his wallet.
You grabbed his empty coffee cup, "Don't worry about it.”
“Thanks” His mouth opened and closed like he was going to say something but stopped himself. You turned to put his mug away when he called your name.
Your eyes widened briefly as you turned facing him.
“How’d you know my name?”
“Your name tag” He huffed out a laugh.
“Oh right,” You said in realization, you forgot sometimes it was there. You let out a laugh. Trying to cover up how embarrassed you were. It was like you lost all sense around him.
He paused before speaking, almost like he was debating if he was going to say his next words or not.?
“It was nice talking to you.” He finally said.
You felt like he had more on his mind but you didn't push any. Just nodding like an idiot, with a smile on your face you were sure was too big.
“Yeah you too.” you paused. “I'll see you soon?”
“For sure,” He nodded with a smile as he exited the diner.
The silences had settled, you finished cleaning the diner with a stupid grin on your face. There was a warm feeling in your chest the rest of the night.
The possibilities for what could come from that short conversation are already flooding your brain before you could stop them.
Content warning: MDNI 18+, Smut, Situationship dynamics, Push and pull, light angst, Reader is still avoidant, Cam is done playing games.
W/C: 2.2K
A/N: Its been so long but I wanted to finish this story, Cam needed some redemption so he kinda got his lick back. Not fully proofread
“Come over”
You sent the message like clock work. Cameron was always your go too on nights like this. It had been 2 weeks since you last saw or talked to him. You assumed he was butt hurt over how you kicked him out after everything last time.
It wasn't your fault and you weren't going to feel bad about it. You made it clear to anyone you talked to that nothing was serious. He was your favorite but you’d never tell him and there were no labels keeping you loyal to Cameron.
10 minutes had passed with no response.
That was weird.
Cam was always quick with his replies.
Another 10 minutes passed when you finally got a text.
‘Busy’
Busy?
He was never busy at this time of night and what could be doing that was more important than you.
The dry response threw you off.
He was bullshitting and you knew it. If that was his attempt at making you beg for him, he was mistaken. You never begged. And he wasn't going to change that for him.
“Wrong number” you replied with a quickness, before closing your phone, throwing it down on the couch.
You paced around your apartment unsure what to do. You were never this bothered when it came to someone. You had your fun and moved one, so why did his message bother you?
You didn't care, you didn’t need him anyways, there was always someone else.
Deep down you knew you didn't want anyone else. Truth was you hadn’t messed with any other guys since you started “seeing” Cameron, if that is what you could even call your situation.
You might have entertained a few but that was the farthest it went. They weren't like Cameron, but you would never say that outloud and boost his ego.
You did anything to keep your mind off your phone, fluffing pillows, sweeping, going to the fridge just to close it because nothing looked good.
Your phone stayed where you left it, face down on the couch.
You didn't dare touch it.
You weren't sure if you were more nervous for came's response or for the possibility that he was going to ignore it.
If he wasn't coming, he wasn't coming.
It was that simple.
Nothing to stress over.
Maybe you should call somebody else?
Just to prove a point. It's not like you didn't have their numbers in your phone.
Your eyes flickered to your phone but you didn't move.
You didn't actually want to. That part, you ignored.
A knock hit the door, hard. Not polite or patient. Your head snapped in the direction of the sound. Your heart spiked a little as you made your way to the door. Pulling it open like it didn't matter.
Cameron stood there, jaw set, eyes already on you.
He didn't even let the air settle before he started.
“Fuck you mean wrong number.”
You stood in the doorway trying to seem as unfazed as possible.
“Oh it's you, I was expecting someone else.” you teased, knowing he was already pissed.
“Bullshit” he huffed, sliding past you into your apartment.
“You always have something slick to say.”
You let him pass, closing the door and leaning your back on it as you faced him. He didn't move past the entry way.
“Its the truth, I didn't expect you.” You were lying through your teeth.
“So I should go then?”
All you could muster was a shrug, you feared your voice would betray. You wanted him to stay, you weren't sure why it was so hard for you to say that.
Once he realized you were gonna keep the act up he nodded, “aight then so be it.” moving towards the door to leave.
You didn't move out his way.
“You gonna move or..?” He raised an eyebrow, his hand had reached for the handle next to your hip, sort of trapping you in his space.
“I-” You struggled to get the words out.
“Dont stutter now, I thought you were just all talk.” He said his voice just above a murmur.
You huffed out a frustrated sigh. “I don't see why we need to have a heart to heart Cameron.”
“Thats not what this is, this is about you going on about other niggas when you know they couldnt reach half the places I do.” He murmured, his breath ghosting your face as he closed the space between you.
“Just admit it and ill stay, you just want me jealous, you know your not fucking with no one else.” he said, his lips ghosting yours, eyes locked.
“What are you trying to prove,” you huffed, halfway irritated at the topic but turned on by his closeness. “Who I fuck is none of your buisness.”
You knew you were bluffing but watching his face twitch trying to decipher whether you were serious or not was a bit entertaining.
“So I could fuck around and you just wouldnt care?” he questioned, stepping back to fully take your face in, his eyes bouncing around like he was trying to take in every movement your face made.
“Like you don't already,” you suck your teeth, “Do whatever you want, Cameron, I don't care.”
“Tell me to go then,” he urged, brows raised as he challenged your words. “You don't care? Tell me to go and I'll go.”
You paused for a moment. You could just keep lying but what would that do, you didn't want him to go honestly, but even trying to say that physically pained you.
As long as he thought you didn't need him you had a sense of authority over the situation.
Maybe even him too.
He was just stripping all your walls down and you hated how you felt so free to do so with him. It was never like that when anyone else.
“Just say what you want to.” He pressed.
“You’re irritating.”
“And you still don't want me to leave.”
“I didn’t say that but sure, maybe…” you admitted, trying to keep the smile from creeping up on your face.
He stepped closer, gripping your sides as he pulled your body into his. Your hands instinctively came up his sides resting on his biceps.
“I didn't hear you, one more time,” He fought a grin as he waited for you to repeat yourself.
“You heard me the first time.” you murmured avoiding his eyes, you hated how much he was enjoying this, almost as much as you hated how the words you wanted to say were stuck in your throat.
You exhaled quietly, your grip on his arms tightening just a little.
“Im not saying it.”
He nodded like he expected that. His eyes dropped to your lips.
“I’ll get it out of you, don't worry about it.” That was the last thing you heard from him before he was on you.
His lips attached to yours, he was rough taking what he wanted. It was unapologetic and it caught you off guard, You were always in control but that was quickly changing.
His grip stayed firm at your sides as if he wasn't going to give you the option to slip away this time.
You pushed back, kissing him just as hard, teeth grazed, breaths uneven, you refused to let him completely take over. It turned messy quick, a silent fight for dominance, neither of you were willing to let the other win.
Cam’s hand slid up your body to your jaw tilting your head up giving him better access, the kiss deepened, becoming slower and heavier. He became more deliberate, like he was done playing.
Your thoughts blurred, your senses were flooded with him, he was all you could feel or smell. Your attitude from earlier slipping completely through his fingers as you melted into him.
It bothered you how much of an effect he could have on you. You tried fighting it before but he was making it so hard.
Before you knew it you back was leaving the door and he was guiding you through your place as if it was his own, shredding each other's clothes with an urgency.
He was quick to bend your naked form over the arm of the couch. He pressed his clothed and aching length against you, His boxers the only thing blocking the two of you. His body unmoving , just letting you ache with anticipation.
“You're real quiet now.” He stated, his hands bracing your hips as he rubbed slowly. You whined moving your hips back trying to ease the pressure between your legs.
“Cameron,” You warned, there was no real bite behind it.
“What happened to all that shit you were talkin’?” He questioned, his hand sliding between your heat, fingers rubbing between your folds.
A quiet moan escaped your lips but was muffled by the couch cushion.
Just as the pleasure started to build, he pulled back. Causing you to let out a whine, All you could hear was him shuffling behind you.
“Cam I swear.” you started to fuss as you turned your head when you felt him press into you in one long stroke all the way to the hilt.
You tensed from the sudden intrusion before relaxing, a quiet sound slipping from your lips. He started moving, his strokes starting off slow and torturous. Cam allowed you to feel every inch of him you had been missing.
“Thought you wanted me gone?” he said, his voice gruff.
He picked up speed as he talked, You didn't reply the only sound coming from you were cries and moans as he angled himself so he hit the spot so deep inside you.
His hands rested on your lower back as he pressed down arching you just right.
“Said you were gonna replace me, what happened to that?” He continued as he plowed his way inside you.
When you didn't reply he stopped abruptly, you whined from the pause in stimulation your walls fluttering around him begging for more.
“I can't hear you?” He drawled.
“Please,” You whined trying to press back into him but his hold was unbreaking.
“You answer when I talk to you and I might let you get what you want” He huffed.
You were pissed he was using your words against you. You didn't think your pushing him around was going to catch up as quickly as it did. But you were willing to do anything to get him to keep going even if that meant telling him the truth.
“There's nobody else cam.”
“Who else was supposed to be here?” He pressed and he continued his quick thrusts,
“Nobody.” You whined.
“Yeah?” He murmured.
“You know who you belong to.” He stated his voice low, almost like he was speaking to himself.
“Who's it, huh?” The way he said it almost sounded desperate, you could tell he was getting close, both of your orgasms approaching. He tried to keep the edge in his tone but you knew he needed to hear you say it.
You hesitated but through your moans you answered.
“Yours.”
“Yeah baby it's mine.” He almost whined. He stroked almost wanting to falter. He could have came just from that but he pushed through, determined to get you there first.
Curses flew from both of you, the only other sounds filling the room were the connecting of skin and the wetness between you.
“Oh fuck im gonna cum cam please.” You babbled as you got closer to the edge. All you could do was hold onto the side of the couch as he relentlessly pounded into you.
“I got you baby, come on,” he said slowly.
Your release rushed over you with a heat, hitting you all at once. You clenched around him as he followed suit, spilling inside you. His strokes came to a halt as he rested his hand on your lower back as you both caught your breath.
He could tell you were spent, he helped you up, repositioned you guy so that you were on the couch in his lap. He covered you with a blanket as you rested on him, chest rising and falling in sync.
“You good?” He asked as his hands ran up and down your bare back.
You nodded with tired sound it wasn't quit a hum, you head resting on his shoulder.
He didn't even let the silence rest between you two before speaking.
“Wheres your phone?”
“Why?” You frowned.
“Every ‘nobody’ in there gotta go.”
“You’re so jealous.” you said despite leaning over to grab it from its spot discarded on your couch.
“I'm not jealous, just not gonna share.” he said definitely.
You scrolled through every old flame, He noticed the dates on them some two and three months ago.
“This is the competition you were talking about.” he scoffed.
“I had to keep you on your toes.” you shrugged a grin fighting its way to your face.
“You knew it was me, you just like playing games” he said, calling your bluff.
“Myabe, maybe not,” you shrug, feigning nonchalance.
He stared at you for a second longer than necessary, almost like he was still deciding if you were serious or just being you.
Then he grabbed your phone and tossed it to the side.
“You’re impossible” He murmured as he closed his arms around your waist pulling you flush to his chest.
“And you're still here.” You said finally, as your lips connected with his. All the tension from earlier softened, into something quieter.
You were done running from what you knew was inevitable and he was patient enough to wait for you behind the wall you built so high around your heart.
Summary: A smoke sesh with a friend took an unexpected turn,
Content warnings: MDNI‼️, Smoking, just vibes and soft smut
A/N: Work is whooping me and I’m loosing, it’s been 2 months since my last fic😭, wanted to share something from my drafts, not proofread much I’ll edit later, hope y’all like🫶🏾🫶🏾
The room was filled with the faint smell of smoke and a mixture of cam’s cologne.
The speakers in his apartment playing some song you don't know the name of but liked nonetheless. It was slow with heavy bass and soft vocals that melted into the background.
You were half-laid across Cameron's couch, one of your thighs thrown over this lap like it belonged there.
He didn't try to move it. Didn’t say anything about it either.
His hand rested on your thigh absentmindedly, his thumb tracing random shapes on the exposed skin.
You took a long drag of the blunt, before leaning forward and holding it out to him. He didn't take it immediately. His eyes low as he looks you over.
“What?” You questioned, exhaling softly.
He just shook his head, reaching up and taking it from your fingers. His fingers grazed your, deliberate enough for you to take notice.
“Nothin’.” he said quietly.
You watched him through low eyelids as he inhaled the smoke, exhaling slowly with his head resting on the back of the couch.
You adjusted your leg on his lap, the movement causing him to grip your leg tighter.
“You're doing that shit on purpose.”
“Doing what?” You questioned, your voice coming out softer than you meant it to.
He just hummed, not answering you.
He took another drag of the blunt before resting it on a nearby ashtray. He then turned his attention to your thighs. His hand slipped higher up, it went from resting on your knee to sliding to your mid thigh, almost running under the band of your shorts before sliding back down. He blew the smoke out, eyes coming up to meet yours. The only light in the room coming from the tv’s screensaver.
“Come closer,” He said slowly, his voice coming out gruff.
You paused for a second, taking in what he was asking.
“Why?” You asked confused, his words only adding to the buzz you were feeling from the mix of not only your high but the heat you felt from the contact of your thigh on his.
“I wanna see something.” He said with a low grin, his hand gripping your thigh gesturing you closer.
Slowly, you sat up and moved, adjusting yourself so each of your legs were straddling his. He welcomed the new position fully, his hands instantly going to brace your hips bringing you all the way down on his lap.
You hadn't been this close to him before, you were friends with Cameron, yall flirted and hung out but this was the first time he tried anything like this.
“What do you see?” You asked, looking down at him.
“You.” He said simply.
“You see me all the time.” You tried playing it off, tilting your head slightly confused as to where this situation was heading.
“Not like this”
His words came out quieter. A sincerity behind them that you never heard from Cameron before tonight.
You breath caught. You had become hyper aware of what was happening. They way your hands rested on his shoulders, His on your waist, slightly under the band of your tank top caressing the exposed skin, and how well you fit in his lap.
“You nervous?” he murmured.
“No, we’ve just never been this close before, not like this.” You admitted.
“You wanna move?” He asked to check where your head was.
You just shook your head no, word failing to come out.
His hands ran up your side, coming to the side of your neck, his fingers brushing the base of your jaw as he pulled you closer, his nose brushing yours. He didn't say anything, just pulled you there, your eyes instinctively closed in anticipation. That was when his lips brushed yours. Not really applying pressure but making himself known.
You caved in, sealing your lips to his, letting out a content sigh. The kiss was slow, but you both melted into it. Bodies molding together. You finally pulled back just enough to breathe, your foreheads rested together, breaths mixing together, his leaned forward ghosting his lips against yours again, hungry for more.
“Again,” He murmured, voice low and teasing, “You know…just to see.”
You chuckled, a little breathless, “You're ridiculous.”
“Maybe,” He admitted his grin tugging at his lips, as he leaned in, capturing your lips in his, this time more insistently. His grip on you tightened slightly, one of his hands sliding up along your side, the other on your hip. His mouth trailed from your lips to the corner of your mouth and back again. Almost like he couldn't decide where he wanted to be.
You shifted in his lap, hips slightly rocking to test the waters. He broke from the kiss a sharp exhale leaving his mouth before he dipped back in.
The kiss was lazy, slow, and uncoordinated in the best way. He brought both hands to your hips to guide you into a slow rock. The wetness between your legs as you grinded on his hard length. Your arms wrapped around his neck as you tried to pull him as close as possible, and that still wasn't close enough.
Your hips had found a rhythm, a moan falling from your mouth into his. Your tongues fought, swirling together. Cameron's breath stuttered against your lips, a rough sound coming from the back of his throat. You sucked his bottom lip before releasing it with a pop sound.
“I want more,” You pleaded, desperate for him. Your fingers raked down his sides to pull his shirt up. He was quick to assist you and remove it. Once it was off you moved to kiss his neck, your lips brushing the gold chain, as you sucked leaving marks he'd had to deal with later.
___________
Time had passed, you weren't sure when the makeout got to where it did now, Cam had you laid out on the couch, you shorts and panties long gone and discarded somewhere on the floor, your tank top was pulled over your tits, they were exposed, nipples hard from his stimulation.
His face was buried between your legs, his hands reached up on either side of you hand full of your full breast in his as he slowly made out with your pussy. You were on the edge, your hips rolling against his mouth as curses flew from your mouth.
“Fuck,” your head had lulled to the side eyes closed as you approached your climax. Cameron groaned into your core, tongue dipping inside and then back out to circle your clit.
You fingers ran over his buzzed hair, hand holding him there, not really to guide him but anchor yourself. Every movement from his mouth was building you up, your body tightening with anticipation.
“Cam…” His name broke from your lips like a plea.
He answered with a low sound, the vibration enough to make your breath hitch. His hand slid down from your chest, and down the softness of your waist. Hands gripping your hips to keep you in place as he ravished your core.
Your back arched off the couch, thighs tightening around his head. The room felt smaller, hotter, your nerves felt like they were on fire. Your breath quickened as he brought you right to the edge. You were about to come and then he pulled away.
“I was so close,” You whined.
He leaned up resting his weight between your legs, freeing himself from his pants, thick length springing free.
“I wanna feel you around me when you come,” He said in a low voice as he stroked himself a few times. He slid his tip up and down your wetness making your hips buck slightly when he hit the tip against your aching clit.
“That okay?” He asked looking deep in your eyes before he started.
All you could do was nod eagerly, your tongue wetting your bottom lip, before you caught it between your teeth as you waited to feel him.
“Words please.” he insisted, continuing his slow movements on your wetness, you whined, clenching around nothing in anticipation.
“Yes that's okay, please Cam” You begged.
He did not need any further instruction as he slid inside you painfully slowly. You both let out low moans as he went all the way to the hilt. He stayed there for a second, Leaning down resting his fore arms on either side of you, his face hovering yours as he took your lips in his. He started to rock his hips, dick sliding in and out of you steadily.
The kiss was sloppy, tongues clashing and exploring each other's mouth without rhythm, no grace in it, just a raw need. Your fingers curled into his back. Nails leaving crescent shaped indents in his skin as you tried to get him closer to you.
He swallowed every sound you made, every soft gasp, and shaky breath. His forehead fell to yours, lips barely brushing yours now, His movements still slow, like he wanted to feel everything, Like he was trying to memorize the way your body reacted to him.
Your legs wrapped tighter around his waist, urging him not to stop. He answered with a quiet groan, his control was starting to slip. Steady strokes starting to become more sloppy and losing their rhythm.
Your name left his lips like it belonged there. His head slid to the crook of your neck, muffling his moans and grunts. His pace grew faster and more desperate. His tip hitting the right spot causing your juices to leak onto the couch beneath you. He sat up his hand coming where you were joined at, his thumb brushing your clit in a circular motion. He was chasing his orgasm and working to bring you to yours.
“Fuck,” He whispered as he looked at the sight qbefore him. You laid out in his apartment, pussy glistening and taking all of him. Your eyes squeezed shut, mouth open as you let out the most pornographic moan.
“I cant-” You started, body tensing beneath him, your fingers clutching at his hand, needing a little release from the double stimulation. He shook your hand off gently, continuing his slow circular movements over your bud.
“Nah, you got it,” He murmured, his voice rough, and strained.
“You can take it,” He said, quieter now, and heavy.
“Cameron.” You whined, eyes starting to water from the pleasure. You hand gripped the side of the couch cushion, needing something to ground you.
“You look so pretty taking me like this.” He cooed, His hips moving with you, no hesitation or restraint. He watched your face closely, every flicker or emotion and tremble of your lips as you got close.
“Come on,” He breathed.
He watched as you fell apart, Your lips parted in a silent gasp, eyes glassy as the pressure inside you swelled past something you could contain. Your body tensed, muscles spasming around him. You repeated his name, hand clutching for him, your body trembling through your orgasm, legs shaking around his hips. He was still going, not far behind.
He fell forward on top of you, as a string of curses left his mouth as he came, filling you up. His forehead, against yours as he grounded his hips against yours. Your hips rolled against his as you both rode the wave or your climaxes out.
You both stayed like that, neither in a rush to pull away. His weight pressing you into the couch, solid and reassuring. His nose brushed your cheek.
“We should probably move,” He murmured, his voice still rough, just quieter.
All you could do was hum in a fake agreement, your arms and legs wrapped around him, not making any movement to get him off you.
“Okay maybe in a minute.” He caved allowing himself to get comfortable, it was obvious you weren't letting go anytime soon. Though, Cameron didn't seem to mind.
Content warning: MDNI 18+, Dom/Sub undertones, Oral f!recieving, Maneater reader, Cam is a simp, angsty smut
Word Count: 1.6k
A/N: Can you tell that heated rivalry had me inspired?👀🏒
“Come over you got 10 minutes before I find someone else”
You sent the text to Cameron knowing the outcome. You and him had been fucking around for a little while now. You don't know home many times you had to tell him that your arrangement was just sex but he still had hope for more.
A week had passed of you ignoring his needy calls and text. You weren't ignoring him to be malicious, you simply didn't owe him anything beyond what you decided to give him.
Almost immediately he responded, “Give me 8”
You had options and he knew so here you sat, on your couch phone in hand, waiting for him to show up.
Not even 10 minutes later, a knock came to your door and there he stood in the doorway of your apartment, out of breath like he ran there.
“I hope you didn't speed to get here” You said to him teasingly. “Hate for you to get a ticket over me.”
“You’d love that and you know it” He replied back, eyes squinting at your antics.
“Dont get cocky Cameron, you're not even inside yet.” You warned, but the corners of your mouth betrayed you, twitching into a hint of a smile.
You pulled the door open, stepping back to let him inside. His eyes flickered to the silk robe that adorned your figure as he walked past you.
“Shoes off.” You said, closing and locking the door and turning to him.
He slipped off his shoes, placing them neatly by the door facing you like he was waiting for instructions.
“My room.” You ordered and he stepped into action walking through your apartment like second nature to your bedroom. You followed behind him letting him lead the way, but made sure the heat from your gaze kept him in check.
He lingered in your space as he turned to look at you, His eyes low and expectant waiting on your next instruction.
“Take that off.” you gestured to his clothes. “All of it, you can leave your boxers on.”
He hesitated for a second, a bit taken aback but that didn't stop him from peeling his hoodie and sweat off. Left only in his black boxers and gold chain.
“Good,” you smirked, “The others don't listen as well as you.”
His brows furrowed, he hated the mention of the other guys you talked to. You laughed briefly at his expression as you stepped forward, trailing a hand down his stomach and slipping your fingers into the band of his boxers.
“Relax, sit down.” You pulled your hands away, the band snapping against his skin.
He sat on the edge of your bed and you climbed into his lap, your thighs straddling his. Your robe slid open just a slight bit revealing your lace panties and lower stomach. The fabric being the only thing separating him from you. You could feel his want beneath you. Your hands rested on his shoulders as you looked at him. His hands moving to your hips holding you in place.
Your hand moving to the side of his face holding his jaw in hand. He leaned forward, going to kiss you. But you turned his head at the last second and whispered in his ear. “You’re impatient.”
“You don't get what you want unless I give it to you, maybe if you work hard enough I'll kiss you.” you say as you pull his face back towards you looking into his eyes as you continue. “Sounds good?”
Cameron swallowed as he nodded his head, his chest rising and falling, but he didn't say a word. You pushed him back onto the bed. Your hands go to the tie on your robe pulling it and opening it the rest of the way, revealing your bare chest to him.
He looked up at you from his position on your bed. His gaze dropped from your face to your chest. Before he could stop himself his hands were trailing up your sides, he almost cupped your breast when you pushed his hands away and crawled up his body, thighs bracketing his chest.
“You’re gonna make me feel good and if you do an okay enough job, I might let you handle that.” You say looking down at him and gesturing to the hard-on that sat between his legs.
You climbed the rest of the way hovering over his face. He immediately went into action, pulling you panties to the side as he placed a kiss on your inner thigh. Before placing an open mouth on your lips.
You immediately shuddered at the contact, the heat from his mouth sending a shock right through your core. His hands laid on the sides of your thighs as he pulled you the rest of the way down. His lips sucked at your clit, working you to your release with every deliberate movement and brush of his lips.
Moans fell from your lips as he mouth worked expertly, each flick of his tongue and bringing you closer and closer to the edge.
“Shit Cam slow down, not yet.” You gasped, your voice low and breathless letting him know that you were close, Your hands came to your nipple tweaking it adding to your pleasure, your eyes falling shut and head rolling back.
He looked up at you, groaning at the sight of the sound sending vibrations through you. His hips buckled slightly, searching for some kind of stimulation.
His eyes were dark as they watched youm he took it even further as he licked a strip up your pussy before sticking his tongue inside, your breathes came in ragged moans as he tongue fucked you.
“F-fuck” You whined and you rocked your pussy on his face. Your clit bumping his nose was what sent you over the edge.
With a shuddering cry, your muscles clenched as warmth spread through your body. Your thighs tightened around his head, you almost buckled over but caught yourself on the bed as you rode out the wave of your orgasm. He held you steady, placing soft kisses to your core and inner thighs to coax you through your release.
You shifted off of him now sitting up next to him as you examined his form, his chest raised and fell uneven, his eyes half lidded as he looked at you, mouth glistening from your wetness. Your eyes trailed down his stomach and paused at his lap. They wet spots on his boxers.
“You came,” you huffed out. You hadn’t even touched him and he came from eating you out. “Well I guess you don't need me then” you say standing, grabbing your robe and walking to the bathroom.
“Wait-”
You cut him off by closing the door, the sound final. You took your time cleaning yourself off in the shower, grounding yourself.
When you finally stepped back into your bedroom he was still there, half naked. Now sit up on the edge of the bed waiting for you.
“Thats it?” He asked, his voice low and careful.
You looked around for a second wondering what more he could possibly want. “We both came, why are you still here Cameron.”
“That wasn't on purpose.” He replied sounding a little defeated, and almost embarrassed that he came like that earlier.
“It's okay, I just don't think you need any more tonight.” you said bluntly.
“But you said-” He started before pausing. “We didn’t even kiss.”
“Oh my God Cameron. You're so needy,” You groaned as you came up to him, placing your lips to his. He immediately reacted, his hands on your waist to pull you closer. Your hand held the side of his face, as he tried to deepen the kiss. You broke the kiss first, “There, satisfied?”
He exhaled a shaky breath, eyes still searching yours for more. “You're not fair.”
“I never said I was,” You pecked his lips once more before stepping away. “Dont read into it.”
You knew from the way he looked at you, that was all he was going to do.
“Okay you should go, I have an early morning." You said as you turned to your closet walking in and changing from your robe to a night shirt.
Cameron was still sitting there for a second longer than necessary.
“Right,” He said quietly.
You left the closet, glancing at him as he stood and started to put his clothes back on.
“You good?”
“Yeah. I'm straight.” He replied, even though his face said a different thing.
You nodded, moving toward your bed and getting under your duvet. Not pressing the issue further.
“Lock up behind you.”
“Okay.” He hesitated for a beat, “Ill text you when im home?” He stated but it was posed as a question.
“If you feel the need too, sure.” You said nonchalantly, fixing your bonnet on your head as you turned to go to sleep.
Cameron took that as your dismissal, all hope of you letting him stay the night out the window. He took his leave from your apartment, turning all the lights off and locking the door behind him as he made his short drive back home.
Sleep came easy for you, you didn't lose a bit of sleep knowing Cameron was upset that you didn't let him stay.
For Cameron, hours had passed, the sun now peeking through the curtains of his apartment. His thoughts drifted back to you the whole night. How easily you had control over him and the way you left him completely undone without even trying.
Even though he was a bit defeated he knew that if you called again he’d be right back for more.
Authors note: Srry for the wait, This is a bit short but I wanted to get this part out and close her story. I dont think ill write a pt.3 but that could change👀. I keep saying im going to write more fluffy cameron fics but these angsty ideas keep coming😭🤷🏾♀️. Hope you guys like💕
It had been 2 weeks since your last talk with Cameron, since he showed up and you basically gave him an ultimatum. One you already knew the answer to.
The days following that night were hard to say the least, He continued to try and contact you like everything was fine. Texts throughout the day and missed calls that stacked on top of each other. The messages were short at first, but the more you ignored him the more you could tell he was getting impatient.
It wasn't out of character for you to get upset with him, especially when there were big public displays of affection for his girlfriend like that anniversary post. You would see it and feel hurt and guilty and then he would come in and kiss it better, filling your head with more empty words. Ones that you would believe.
At first, it was strange to be the one not answering, you were so used to always being available to him. Ready and waiting for him to put you back on the shelf for those two seconds of attention.
You had decided after that night that that was done. You had replayed the conversation in your read on repeat for the past weeks. Thinking of what more you wanted to say, and the words you wished he said but you knew it wouldn't change the reality of the situation.
The first week you had removed the key from under your welcome mat, when he arrived like clockwork friday night you ignored the knocks and calls until he was gone. All you wanted to do was open that door but you knew better.
You always did, You weren't oblivious to the wrong that was going on between you and Cameron, but it was like if you pushed the guilt down hard enough you could try and be happy, reassuring yourself that what he had with Ava was going to be over eventually and you weren’t intruding on their “relationship.” but that post was the last straw.
“2 years and counting spent with the love of my life”
The caption was on a loop in your head. You were tired of being the place he ran to when his real life was hard, hidden in the dark waiting for when he needed you. So you stayed silent, it had been 14 days with no contact. Two weeks of unanswered calls from Cameron. His name still lit up your phone screen sometimes but they were becoming less frequent. Voicemails unopened that you refused to listen to, Cameron knew you too well, you knew that listening to any words from him would end in you folding and going back to him and you knew that couldn't happen.
It was Friday again. A week since he last showed up at your apartment trying to get access to you again and you shut him out. You were finishing up at work, gathering your things from your cubicle, saying your goodbyes to coworkers, forcing a quick smile as you left the building.
You just wanted to go home, and get these heels off your feet and relax into your couch with a bottle of wine to try and forget the shitshow that was your love life.
Your shoulder had almost relaxed as you approached your car, that was until you saw him, leaned up against the driver door like he owned it, waiting for you.
You breath caught, your steps faltering as you approached him.
“Are you serious?” You muttered under your breath as you looked around the parking lot to see if anyone was around. “What are you doing here Cameron.”
“You don't know how to answer your phone.” He shot back standing up to his full height. “I needed to see you.”
“If I wanted to talk I would pick up my phone,” You started, anger simmering beneath your skin. “This is my workplace, you don't get to show up here.”
“You’re acting like I walked in there and made a scene, I waited for you to come outside.” His jaw tightened.
“That doesn't make this okay,” You snapped, “You don’t get to corner me because you're frustrated.”
“You know that's not what I'm trying to do, we needed to talk.” He says stepping closer, like he was about to reach out to you.
You stepped back, scanning the parking lot for people. You could see a few others leaving the building for the day, some were already looking over examining the scene.
“Someone's gonna recognize you,” You added sharply, glancing around. “and I'm sure you don't need your girlfriend asking about me so please move.”
The word girlfriend landed harder than you meant it to but you weren’t gonna take it back.
His face darkened, brows furrowing in frustration. “Why do you always have to throw her in my face?”
“Because she exists,” Your voice low not wavering, “and like you said she’s not going anywhere.”
He exhaled with a huff, running his hand over his jaw.
“I'm not gonna to keep doing this knowing nothing's gonna change, And it's a matter of time before someone besides me is hurt so you should leave.”
You let out a breath of relief to finally get all of that off your chest, before you continued. “I don't want to be a secret anymore, or the reason someone else is hurt.”
Your eyes met his, steady despite the ache in your chest. “You need to focus on what really matters to you, and I gotta stop waiting around for someone that is never gonna be mine.”
He didn't say anything, didn't even try to deny it because he knew it was true.
“This should have stopped a long time ago, and you know it”
He swallowed, shifting his weight. “So that's it?”
“Yes,” You said with finality, "I'm not hurting myself to make your life easier.”
“Go home, Cameron.” You added, watching him unmoving in front of your car door.
He stood still for a second just looking at you, saying nothing, like he was calling your bluff. You remained where you were, physically but also standing firm in the decision you were making. It would have been easy to run back into his arms like you always did but easy wasn't always the right choice.
And for once you were going to do the right thing. Years of hiding in the dark, had finally become too much. Shrinking yourself into the spaces she allowed you in. You deserved more than stolen moments and you deserved a love that could offer you more than half of themselves.
So you held your ground, that's when he finally stepped away. With a nod Cameron moved allowing you to open your car door, the gesture felt heavier and the silence heavier.
Your hands had a slight tremble as you stared at your car but you continued nonetheless. Not offering him a last glance knowing it would only reverse the work you were trying to do in distancing yourself from him.
Pulling out of the parking lot of your job as you started your commute home, The weight on your chest was still there. But it was lighter.
For the longest time, since college all you knew was Cameron. This new step scared you a little, but starting over always did. You wouldn't let that fear keep you in a toxic situation no matter how much you wanted to revert to what you knew best, him.
For the first time in a long time, your future felt like it actually belonged to you.
Summary: You have to confront the truth of being Camerons side, and make him decide if keeping you a secert is enough or will you ever be more.
Content warnings: Angst, Cheating, Brief mentions of sex but nothing graphic
Word Count: 1.8K
This was not how you were supposed to be spending your Friday night.
You knew that but it didn't stop you from falling down the social media rabbit hole which was Cameron and his girlfriend's instagram feed.
It was the day of their 2 year anniversary, and you sat in your apartment scrolling their celebration posts.
Black out curtains drawn as you laid on your couch covered in one of Cameron's hoodies. Salty tears threaten to spill from your eyes and you swipe on the photo dump he posted.
“2 years and counting spent with the love of my life”
Pictures of them celebrating at a nice restaurant. Her hand in his, and then more taken throughout the year. Them at events, his games, at home, on dates. It made you sick, you knew what your relationship was with him but that didn't soothe you any.
You and Cameron were friends way before he even met her. Long before his fame as the Saviours quarterback. Before his polished image and his name meant something to strangers. You knew the version of him from college that had no money and big dreams. That was what hurt most, you knew him longer but still managed to come in second.
You guys had the kind of relationship that others didn't understand. People who didn't know you would have thought you dated but it was never like that. Just friends that were too close.
You and him had your own relationships that never lasted. Cameron talked to these pretty girls you didn't pay any mind, and he tried to scare away the boys you looked to find normalcy in. When those ended you and him would have each other's backs.
The kisses were quiet at first, almost like they were accidents that neither of you wanted to apologize for. It was too intimate to just be called friendship but too uncertain to be anything else.
There were conversations of what you guys were but Cameron would just say, “You're my person, That's enough right?” or “I don’t see why we have to label anything we know what we have.”
While that would settle you for a bit, it still wasn't enough. Yeah, you and him had an understanding of each other like no one else but would that be all you were to him?
You lived completely different lives, You worked a nice office job at a company that not many people knew about and he was a football star that did photoshoots with GQ. Your friend groups were completely separate. He never introduced you to any of his teammates and he never met any of your friends. They knew of him in passing, that he was a good friend from college that you messed around with from time to time.
Since the fame his life was never really his own. Cameron was managed 24/7 by a team who were paid solely to make sure he was received well in the public eye. So imagine how you felt when he said he was being set up with some actress for “PR.” He claimed that his team thought it would be good for the public to see him in a relationship.
Then to your surprise they actually kick it off and a year later are moved in together. To everyone Cameron and her were building a life that looked picture perfect, the internet loved them together.
Her name was Ava, the simple mention of her pissed you off.
Ava was everything you weren't, like Cameron, she was famous, an actress in almost every popular movie that came out this year. For a while it felt like her face was taunting you. She didn't know who you were but you knew her.
Cameron would come to your apartment and complain about their relationship to you. You were always open to hearing him vent but to have to hear about her all the time online and then he mention her name during your alone time with him, that was another nail in the coffin.
There was one thing that she had over you that irked you the most. She had him. She got to claim Cameron as hers in public while you were just something he indulged in only in private. She knew his friends. Shared a home with him, everything you wanted deep down but would never attain.
You weren't sure how the arrangement came to be, but it had become routine for you and Cameron. He would live his life like normal the whole week but come friday night he would be at your doorstep like clockwork.
He’d arrive and would have you spread out on every surface imaginable, whispering how much he loved you and missed you all week. How anything you saw online didn't really mean anything, and it was all just for looks, “You’re what really matters to me baby.”
Reckless for one, prancing around with a famous athlete, what would tabloids say if they found out. Also, selfish of you to be messing with someone you knew was taken. No matter how much he complained of their relationship that didn't make what they had any less significant.
It had to be desperation, You would have never envisioned yourself being comfortable with being nothing more than a secret. But nonetheless you loved him, and from the quiet of your apartment on those 2 days out of the week. It was like he belonged to only you, in a way.
You had been waiting for him longer than usual, Fridays were usually predictable. Cameron was never early, but he was never late either. Tonight though, the hours seemed to drag on, You had sat on the couch watching the light fading from behind the curtains. He was usually here before night fell.
What hurt most was that you were watching him celebrate someone else. You watched him celebrate his anniversary to another woman while you sat there alone. You wanted to be celebrated, not just in private, in front of people just like she was.
Time seemed to blur after that, seeing those post made the hollow feeling in your chest seem greater. Your phone was discarded on the couch somewhere now. You tried to silence your mind in any way, focusing on the hum of traffic outside.
The doorbell pulled you out of your miserable state. You sighed, knowing who it was. At first you didn’t move hoping by some miracle he would leave and you could rot further into your couch.
He knocked and then came a call from your phone that you declined as quick as it popped up. The shuffling behind the door stopped after a minute. You released a breath you weren't meaning to hold.
He had left.
That was what you thought before you heard the lock turn and the front door open. “You should get rid of the key under the welcome mat if you want to be left alone that badly” You heard his voice as he moved closer into the living room.
You tried your best to camouflage into the cushion of the couch hoping by chance he’d miss you.
Cameon cut the lights on causing you to wince and cover your eyes with your hands, a slight headache already there from you crying not too long ago.
“Why are you in the dark?” He asked as he examined your form on the couch. Covered in his hoodie and shorts that didn't cover much.
You didn't reply or look at him, you heard plastic ruffle and you peeked from behind your hands, he had set flowers down on the coffee table.
Your favorites, the same ones he would bring every weekend to try and make you feel better for not being able to show up fully like he wanted too.
There was still a small part of your heart that softened at the sight of them, and the effort behind them. You hated how easily he could make you forget the hurt you were feeling when he was the cause of it.
You finally looked up at him, carefully, not trying to give anything away.
His face softened as he looked at you, he stepped closer, He knew that you saw the posts, you always saw them.
He moved to sit next to you on the couch, “Come here, I hate when you look at me like that.”
For the first time in a long time you didn't move to him. It was always so easy, He’d get to live his life and then come to you. And you always welcomed him with open arms like everything was fine.
“How was dinner?” You asked your voice flat, not too sharp, just empty.
“Boring.” He said dismissively, You could tell he was already over the topic, not wanting to discuss his night.
He shifted closer, you could feel his body heat as he grabbed you by the waist and pulled you onto his lap, you stiffened for a second but gave in, straddling his lap.
“We good?” He asked, searching your face for anything.
You weren't, but you stayed. You always did.
For a moment you paused, your fingers toyed with the collar of his shirt. “What if I started seeing someone?” You asked casually, like it was a thought that had just come to you.
His jaw clenched, “Y/n please dont start with that shit.”
“What? You get to have a whole public relationship, it's only fair I get one too.”
Cameron’s hands tightened around your waist. Almost as if to make sure you wouldn't get away. You could tell the idea made him uneasy.
“Thats not the same and you know it.”
“I don't see how it's not,” You sighed frustrated, “I want to be wanted out loud too.”
“What’s two days out of the week, Cameron?” You asked him genuinely. He couldn't think that this arrangement would last forever. You wanted more but it didn't seem like he could give that to you.
“Im trying to make it work,” He shifted beneath you, his hands loosening at your waist.
“You’re making it work for you,” You corrected, “You get this full life with her and I'm just something that you fit into your schedule at the last minute.”
You watched him think of what to say, try and find the perfect words to get you to stay like usual. “You should go.”
You said quietly as you slid off his lap needing space between you before he could pull you back in.
“So you're icing me out now,” His brows knit together, “You knew what this was from the start.”
“Yeah, I thought I’d be okay with this but I'm tired ” You say avoiding his eyes.
“I never said I'd leave her.” He replied, his voice firm.
“No,” You shook your head, “But you let me believe you might.”
Silence stretched between the two of you. He watched you for a long moment, weighing his next move.
Finally, he said, “This doesn't end things.”
You met his eyes, your heart pounding in your chest. “That depends on you.”
For once, he didn't feel like the power was entirely in his hands.
Ouu girl i absolutely love urr ficss and was wondering if you could make 1 on summer walker reader x Cameron cade
To Real To Switch
Cameron Cade X Black!Fem Reader
Summary: You've never been good at staying, but when Cameron comes into your life that changes.
Word count: 1.8K
Content warnings: Angst, hurt/comfort, alcohol consumption, Reader has a fear of commitment
Authors Note: Thank you so much for this request! I hope ya'll enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it. My request are always open, I'd love to see any ideas you guys would want to see me write!🫶🏾
You were never a creature of habit, never the type to stay too long. Not with places, people or even the different versions of yourself. Routines bored you, and habits felt like cages. The moment something felt predictable was the second you had to leave.
As an artist that was what you were known for, it became your signature. Different eras, moving from one genre to the next. Your aesthetic changed with the seasons. People admired you for it. They loved your versatility and called it growth. Even in relationships you never stayed too long, you learned quickly that nothing lasted when you were a public figure. You tried the whole exclusive thing before but once the media got a hold of it, it didn’t last.
In reality it was your way of protecting yourself , if you didn't stick with something too long, or stayed somewhere too long you wouldn't have trouble letting go, people wouldn't expect anything from you. You secretly wanted more but loved the freedom that came with your choices.
That was until him.
Cameron Cade came along quietly. There was no big entrance, no moment you saw coming. His presence was unexpected but became something you didn't know you would need.
At first you tried treating him like another one of your flings, something you’d enjoy for a week maybe even two and it would fade like always. Usually it didn't take long, either you would cut things off before the media caught a whiff of your relationships or they did something that threw you off, The ick came easy and leaving them came easier.
But that never came with him, Cameron had this pull that was subtle but constant. It was the kind where his presence would linger longer than you wanted too. He didn't rush you, didn’t pry or ask you for much. He didn't try to take up space that you didn't offer him.and those small things made so much more of a difference.
You told yourself that it was nothing, then you found yourself letting him stay longer after having sex, you allowed yourself to sit in the comfortable silence instead of rushing him out the door. Names already saved in your phone were forgotten, messages from old flames went unanswered, you were suddenly uninterested. It wasn't a decision you made actively, your attention just narrowed, your focus slowly starting to go all to him.
You tried to blame it on boredom, He was just a thrill that didn't bother you like the others. Deep down you knew that wasn't the full truth. This wasn’t your normal counting the days until it was over, this was you wondering what could happen if things lasted longer.
That’s what scared you, the what ifs?
What if, somewhere down the line he did something that made you hate him? What if you let yourself get attached to him publicly and that's all you became, an extension of him and not just…you.
All of the what if’s were just too much for you to handle. The fear you felt, you never sat with it before. When things got scary you changed scenery, so like you always did you pulled back.
It had almost reached the two month mark, you pulled away like you did with the others, slowly hoping to ease any hurt. Texts were sent sparingly, calls were missed and never returned. You told yourself you weren't being cruel, you were just controlling yourself from the heart break. Distancing yourself before damage could be done. It wasn't like you owed him anything, you weren't even together, that's what you told yourself.
Even as you ignored him, he lingered. You find yourself writing songs about him, thinking about him in your quiet moment alone, and videos of him coming up on your timeline. For the first time, changing didn't make your feelings go away, they only amplified them.
You threw yourself into what you knew best, distractions. A new wardrobe, a new playlist, new hair color. It was all pointless. You even tried answering the phone for an old fling, some guy who knew his place and didn't ask for more than you gave him. You weren't even able to get through with it, felt like you’d hurt Cameron if he found out. It felt like cheating even though it wasn't.
You were currently out with your girls, surrounded by noise and bright lights, and people who should have been distracting enough. You tried to let go and have fun but everything reminded you of him. You tried to put on a smile but your friends could tell something was off with you.
You threw back shots trying to soften your mood, they eased your thoughts, not by much but it helped a little. Your friends nudged you every now and then, pointing out okay looking men but you weren't amused.
“You’re not even here,” one of them said, resting a hand on your arm.
You didn’t argue, they walked you outside calling a taxi and easing you inside. “Adress?” The driver asked.
It was like your brain froze, your mind couldn't seem to form a thought as to where you lived, You knew you had too much. Suppressing a heave you said the first one that came to mind.
Cameron’s address rolled off your tongue like muscle memory. It startled you at first how easily it came to you, but you didn't try to correct yourself. You let the driver move through the city and towards his house.
By the time the car had slowed down you could hear your heartbeat in your ears. You looked at the familiar apartment building, you told yourself you could still leave. But you didn’t.
It was like you were operating on an auto pilot, moving through the lobby up the elevator and to his door. You realized something even in your drunken state, your pride didn't matter, and that fear you felt took a backseat.
You lifted your hand, no hesitation and knocked on his door.
You heard him say something behind the door. As he opened the door he looked surprised at first but he didn't say anything, he just looked at you. His jaw was tight and his eyes looked darker than you remembered.
He didn't say anything, he just waited. The silence felt uncomfortable but it forced the words out of you.
“I know it's late, I'm sorry for showing up like this,” you said first, voice unsteady. “I know I disappeared on you.”
“You drunk y/n?” He asked, looking you over.
“I didn't have a lot," you slurred.
He sighed, moving out the way to let you in. “Come on.”
You moved inside, stopping just past the doorway. You had been to his place many times but suddenly you felt unsure of what to do with yourself.
“You ghosted me,” he finally said, he wasn't loud, just factual. That hurt you worst, he sounded detached. Like the feelings he felt before, that softness that his voice used to hold towards you was gone. He passed you moving to sit on the couch.
“I didn't know how to stay,” you admitted. “So I left.” You followed behind him sitting on the opposite side of the couch.
“You didn't think to say any of this to me at all,” he said, brows furrowed in frustration, “I called you and you ignored me.”
He continued, “I didn’t know if you were okay. If I did something.“
You shook your head quickly, “No you're perfect, You didn’t do anything.” You could feel tears welling in your eyes, you hated that you made him feel like he was the problem, when in reality it was you. Your feelings for Cameron grew fast, and way deeper than you expected. Instead of facing things head on you panicked and let go.
Your drunken state seemed to help you say what you’ve been avoiding.
“I’m Just scared,” You said quietly, “I-I’ve never been good at commitment and things just felt too real with you, I don't know how to give myself to someone without feeling like I'm disappearing. And I'm terrified of getting hurt, so I ended things before any of that could happen.” You took a shaky breath, staring at the floor.
“And I tried to forget you, I did.“ You said, your voice cracking. “I just couldn't."
You finally looked up at him, your eyes glossy, and makeup ruined from crying. “I didn't mean to hurt you Cameron, or make you feel like you're not enough because you're more than that, I just don’t know how to stay without losing myself or you.”
He listened without interrupting, eyes never leaving you, when you were finished, the room was quiet. Like everything that needed to be said was finally out. He exhaled slowly, the tension inside of him easing.
“Youi should have told me” he started softly, “I can't read your mind.”
You nodded, “I know. I just didn't think you would understand.”
“Come here.” he gestured towards you. You obeyed crawling into his lap, your arms wrapping around his neck. His wrapping around your waist.
“You don't have to lose yourself to be with me.” he said quietly. “And I'd never do anything to hurt you, I'd be stupid to purposely go and lose someone as good as you.”
“But that disappearing shit, I can't do that again?”
You swallowed, nodding again. “I don’t wanna do that either.”
He held you against him, no rush or pressure, just breathing each other in after the time spent apart.
Your forehead rested against his, your eyes closed as you spoke, “I missed you.”
He didn't reply immediately, moving to place a kiss on your forehead.”I missed you too.”
Laying in his arms made you realize you didn't want anyone else. You were tired of the constant changes of your previous “love life”. Cameron wasn't replaceable like the rest. You knew that you wanted to make it work. Because he was it you, there was no switching him out, no amount of distraction could erase him from your brain, from your life.
Being without him hurt far more than staying ever could. Nothing could fill the spaces that he took up in your life.
You moved to rest your head in the crook of his neck, settling in his arms.
“We’ll talk more in the morning, okay?” he said softly, he could tell you were tired.
“Mhm,” You hummed in agreement.
His hand rested on your head, playing with the strands as he spoke lowly. “I like this color, it's nice on you. Different."
“I thought you would,” you murmured, into his shoulder.
Before he knew it all he could hear was your snores. All he could do was sigh, a smile covering his face. He was just glad you were back. He didn't dare try and move you, in fear if he loosened his hold on you you might disappear again, he wasn't sure how long he sat there holding you but the tension he had felt from the weeks without you had completely vanished.
He was glad you were back, and staying, and for now that was more than enough.
Summary: A late night studio session with deadlines on the clock, but Tyriq isn’t worried about time.
Content warnings: 18+ MDNI, Smut/Fluff, Established relationship
Word count: 1.2k
Authors note: Tyriq withers wasn’t under the Christmas tree😔, so here’s a fic to ease the pain🤭
The studio was quiet in a way that only existed after midnight. There was no chatter, no engineers or producers in the way, just you and your instruments.
You were currently sitting on the couch with your notepad open, clicking your pen hoping lyrics would magically appear on the page. Your label had been hounding you about deadlines but you were coming up with nothing.
Your boyfriend sat near the console fidgeting with buttons and scrolling through beats, unaware of how distracting he was being.
“Tyriq stop touchin’ stuff,” you said softly.
He looked back, "I'm not even doing anything.”
“Yes you are,” You replied, with a huff.
“Am not,” He mumbled, facing the console again trying to be more subtle with his quest to touch every button possible.
“I don't know how I'm gonna get anything done with you in here,” You said as you stood abandoning your notepad on the couch crossing the room to him.
You rolled his chair back so you could sit on his lap. Him welcoming you by wrapping his arms around your waist, your back flush with his chest. If lyrics wouldn't come, maybe a sound would. You scrolled through beats looking for something to work on, but nothing sounded even half as good as what your label was looking for.
He started to rub his hands on the side of your waist. “See that's what im talking about you're a distraction.”
“You're the one who sat down.” He chuckled low, leaning back some, his hands still resting on your waist.
“You’re the one in my seat.” You countered, continuing to look for something that sounded right.
He started to bounce his leg slightly beneath you, his fingers kneading the flesh at your waist. It wasn't very obvious, but it was enough to be hard to ignore.
“Tyriq,” You warned, perplexed by his inability to sit still.
“What?” he said innocently leaning forward, his breath warm against your ear, sending a shiver down your spine. “Im not touching anything.”
“You just wont stop will you,” You sighed, glancing at him over your shoulder.
He just smirked , an unbothered look on his face, “Maybe you just need a break.”
“Maybe you need to sit somewhere else.” you said slowly.
“Maybe not,” He countered, his breath now ghosting your neck as he placed a few kisses at the back of your neck.
You laughed under your breath at his antics, he continued his attack on your neck, your eyes closing for a half second. You were caught between wanting to have space to work and not wanting to move away from his touch at all.
He took that laugh as permission, his lips trailing along the curve of your neck leaving opened mouth kisses, and nips across your skin you were sure would mark up later. His hands had found their way under your shirt, covering your stomach.
“Tyriq,” you murmured, but there was no real warning behind it.
Your eyes closed, a sigh escaping your lips and that's all it took, His hands ran back down to your waist grounding you there, you inhaled through your nose, trying to steady yourself but your focus was already gone.
“This is why I can't work” You breathed out, a slight rock in your hips.
“Mm” he hummed, “That just sounds like an excuse.”
The studio had gotten warmer, and it felt smaller. You sighed and smiled despite knowing that there were things probably more important that you should be doing.
“Five minutes and then I'll get back to work,” You declared, your voice low as you spoke.
“You know it won't take that long,” He smirked as he kissed your jaw, slow and deliberate.
His hands moved to the hem of your shorts, starting to pull them down, You lifted your hips helping him the rest of the way.
“Keep those legs open baby,” He said gruffly, you immediately opened your legs to give him better access. He moved his right hand down to cover your center.
He started frustratingly slow circular motions over your clit causing a soft whine to escape from the back of your throat.
“Shit you’re wet already.” He cooed, his chin resting on your shoulder as he looked down at your wetness. Your hips rolled on his lap as you searched for more. He let out a pleased sound, you could feel this length hardening beneath you.
“You were trying to act bothered, look at you now so needy.” he teased in your ear.
“Ty please,” You moaned, your head falling back to rest on his shoulder. “More” You begged your voice desperate and soft.
His hands moved deliberately, the left pulling your shirt and bra up, freeing your tits. Nipples hardening when met with the air in the studio, Tyriq started tweaking your nipple between his fingers, his other hand started to quicken its pace on your clit.
You let out a moan from the stimulation, Your head turned to his, leaning forward to capture his lips in a kiss. He was more than welcome to it, his tongue immediately searching yours.
A finger dipped inside your wetness causing you to moan against his lips, He took that as motivation, he added another before ramming them in and out of your pussy. He ravished your lips, swallowing all the sounds you let out. You broke the kiss, your head falling back in pleasure, you could feel your orgasm building. Your breath hitching and body melting into his.
Your legs started to close, the sensation becoming too strong, He tugged at your nipple, and gave a soft bite to your earlobe. “ I thought I said keep your legs open,” he said roughly.
All you could muster as a reply, was a broken sorry between moans, as your legs snapped back open, you opened them wider this time resting a foot on the sound bar, bumping something on the table. You were too in the moment to pay attention to what you had done. Your hands resting on his thighs to keep yourself up.
“Careful” he murmured, a smile on his face from the sound you were producing, they sounded better to him than any song on his playlist.
You let out a rough moan as you clenched around his fingers, Your eyebrows knitted together as you got close. “Fuck Tyriq, just like that, Im gonna cum.” You squealed, your eyes squeezing shut as warmth ran through your body.
Your muscles tensed, your hips jolting involuntarily as you came all over his hand. You felt so high, your body trembling as you tried to come back down to earth. Eyes low but blinked rapidly as you came to.
Tyriq had his head buried in your neck breathing you in, slow movements on your wetness, coaxing you through your orgasm. You were enjoying the after shocks when your eyes flickered up to the blinking red dot at the top of the studio that said “recording.”
Your hands flew to your mouth in shock, a gasp leaving your lips.
Tyriq tensed in concern. “What's wrong?”
Your hands covered your face as you managed to get it out, “We just recorded that.”
His eyes flicked to the light and he relaxed a slow grin covering his face, “Well there's some inspo for your new song.”
“I can't take you anywhere,” You laugh, your forehead resting on his.
“I don't know, I'd say the music we just made was perfect,” He teased, “You sounded great.”
